A Self-Balancing Robot with Legs Inspired By Boston Dynamics’ Handle @Raspberry_Pi #PiDay #RaspberryPi

Harry at Raspibotics has come up with a self-balancing robot, inspired by the Handle robot from Boston Dynamics. Here are notes on the project from Raspibotics Blog

As a student, I’m on a tight budget so I’ve used off the shelf hobby components that can be bought off of Amazon for cheap. I really wanted to make my design unique as there are already loads of fixed balancing robot projects out there. The addition of servos to manipulate limbs on wheels brings a challenge with a number of benefits. Namely, being able to adjust the height of each leg to remain stable even when tipping from side to side and greater off-road capability as well as even jumping (may need faster servos though). For the wheel motors, 2x 38mm Depth NEMA 17 Stepper Motors are used as they are widely available for 3D Printing and have great precision, hopefully allowing for more stable balancing later on. To move the legs 2 MG996R metal gear servos are used for each leg. These servos can be bought for cheap (more expensive ones may be better suited however) and allow for precise control over their position which is handy when generating an Inverse Kinematics (IK) Handler to move the legs up and down straight later on. I’m also using an Arduino Uno to handle all of the PID calculations that will make the bot balance as it’s better at real-time stuff than the pi.

See project!


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