Radio control cars have always been fun, it’s true. With that said, it’s hard to deny that true speed was unlocked when lithium polymer batteries and brushless motors came to the fore. [Gear Down For What?] built himself a speedy RC car of his own design, and it’s only got two wheels to boot (Youtube link, embedded below).
The design is of the self-balancing type – if you’re thinking of an angry unmanned Segway with a point to prove, you’re in the ballpark. The brains of the machine come thanks to a Teensy 3.6, which runs the PID loops for balancing and control. An MPU6050 gyroscope & accelerometer provide the necessary sensing to enable the ‘bot to keep itself upright in varied conditions. Performance is impressive, with the car reaching speeds in excess of 40 MPH and managing to handle simple ramps and bumps with ease. It’s all wrapped up in a 3D printed frame which held up surprisingly well to many crashes into tripods and tarmac.
Such builds are not just fun; they’re an excellent way to learn useful control skills that can serve you well in industry and your own projects. You can pick up the finer details of control systems in a university engineering course, or you could give our primer a whirl. When you’ve whipped up your first awesome project, we’d love to hear about it. Video after the break.
Coolest Segway EVER!
Very impressive
My balance bot was not nearly as successful.
https://youtu.be/RD2ZHtSvuco
Pattern it, put it on the market before knock off flood the market.
Yes! Patent it! Then realize that you don’t want to start a company, put it in a drawer for the next 80 years so no one will have the innovation!
Patents are only good for 20 years (here in the US at least), and I don’t think there’s anything novel enough to be patentable here. Plus, if you aren’t interested in doing anything with your patent, folks can violate it without any problems because it’s your own lawyers who have to enforce it. I’m hardly pro-patent but let’s get the facts straight at least.
Yah, nothing novel here – kudos to a lot of practical engineering tho, nailing down the exactly right coefficients for a given PID application is an exercise in suffering, misery, and missing information.
Super cool, but definitely needs to be painted as Domo Kun… ;-)
Watching this makes me happy.
Next up: Yellow-line-follower?
“true speed was unlocked when lithium polymer batteries and brushless motors came to the fore.”
Really? I totally agree with the article and the build; don’t get me wrong about that. But as an old RC-Flattrack-Racer in the 1980s I beg to differ in this particular thing.
We had .22 nitro engines with close to 3,5 hp in our less than five pound cars…
I wonder how different the system would be if instead of performing calcs on speed it did-so on position (wherein, of course, position changes with time).