Do a Google search on “build your own robot” and you’ll find a treasure trove of kits, articles, and videos. Have you ever wanted to give this a try? An engineer at Maxim with a long-standing interest in robotics found a way to build his own using one of the company’s featherboards. Presented with an opportunity to write some example code for the Bosch Sensortec BMI160 inertial measurement unit (IMU) on Maxim’s MAX32630FTHR board, the engineer jumped at the chance to build his own self-balancing robot.
Such robots must do alot of mathematical calculations. The engineer started his project by configuring the on-board IMU, which estimates a pitch angle from vertical to help the robot stay straight. Should the robot drift away from the vertical point, the control loop would direct the DC motors to keep the base of the robot under its center of gravity.
The MAX32630FTHR board is designed to help engineers quickly implement battery-optimized solutions with the MAX32630 ARM Cortex-M4F microcontroller. And Maxim’s featherboards are plug-in compatible with Adafruit’s Featherwing add-ons, giving a hundred different peripheral options in a snap.
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