Segway Robot Project

Students in ECE 496 was asked to build a self balancing robot using TI Stellaris Launchpad as embedded computation unit the in Spring 2014 semester. They may first develop the system in a more sophisticated hardware-in-the-loop prototyping system (xPC Target with Quanser Q4 board) environment and then port their design to the embedded platform. As the TA for this lab, I am inspired by this idea and have built a full-size Segway using my TI Stellaris Launchpad Target Support Package as well. Pose control, motor control, sensor data fusion and runtime state logic are all done in Simulink and then transformed into binary for the micro-controller. So no explicit coding is done for this project.

Here is a screenshot of the Simulink diagram at top level.

A picture of the construction (battery not included). Main frame is built with Bosch metal available in the lab. Motor and wheels are electric scooter parts. Motor driver H-bridge is from ebay. Total cost, excluding frame and battery is ~$150.

Test run video (with open-loop motor control)