Analog Balancing Robot

Balancing robots are a common control systems problem that demonstrate the ability to model and stabilize a complex system. My electric circuits course included an open ended design project where students were encourage to design creative projects using concepts from class - and analog electronics only. 

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Given I had learned about the differentiation, integration, and summation properties of operational amplifier feedback circuits, as well as PID controllers in my embedded controls course, my two lab partners and I decided to implement a PID controller with operational amplifier circuits to control a balancing robot. 

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Our circuit included a PID controller with inputs from an analog accelerometer and rate gyro fed into integrator and summation Op-Amp circuits with tunable control gains from potentiometers, a PWM generator based on the control output fed into an H-bridge motor controller, as well as an infrared transmitter and filtering circuits for remote control. 

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We faced many challenges implementing such a large circuit on breadboards, and spent many hours debugging. The most important practice we learned was to build circuits in very small building blocks at a time and ensuring they work as expected before implementing them with other blocks into a large complex circuit. 

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