[Tijmen Verhulsdonck] built his own version of a Wii remote-controlled balancing robot. He drew his inspiration from the SegWii, which was built by [Ara Kourchians].
The body is built using one of our preferred fabrication methods; threaded rod makes up a rail system, with three sheets of hard board serving as a mounting structure for the motors, electronics, and battery. This does away with the 9V batteries used on the original SegWii, opting for a very powerful lithium battery perched on the highest part of the assembly. It uses an Arduino as the main microcontroller. That detects roll, pitch, and tilt of the body by reading data from a Sparkfun IMU 5 board (we’re pretty sure it’s this one). Check out the videos after the break. The first demonstrates the robot balancing on its own, then a Wii remote is connected via Bluetooth and [Tijmen] drives it around the room by tilting the controller. The second video covers the components that went into the build.
This is impressive work for a 17-year-old. [Tijmen] lists his material cost at $800 but since he’s Dutch this might not be a USD currency.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNjMjCtNWs0&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mciuuKh-RyA&w=470]
Dutch vampire builds upright robot. This is actually pretty cool. I’m curious as to how much weight it can carry. Terrific design, thumbs up.
I saw this project on dutch TV even. You’re famous now!
but hmm..
“Operating system: Arduino”
“Programming language: Arduino”
I’d like to see someone build one using a WiiMote as the sensor. THAT would be a challenge.
The wii mote contains all the sensors you would need to provide the necessary feedback for the inverted pendulum system. Since I believe all that data is all being fed out via the bluetooth connection I don’t think it would be terribly difficult to access it. Then it would just be a matter of designing the controller to process the error signals. It would certainly be do-able.