COSC 594

SELF - STABILIZING PLATFORM

Overview

For this project we were tasked to create a physical-interaction using IMU and motors along with some other sensors. We designed a self-stabilizing platform that maintains stability or balance without external intervention. IMU consists of sensors such as accelerometers and gyroscopes that measure the platform's orientation, acceleration, and angular velocity in real-time. These sensors provide data about how the platform is moving and its current position relative to a reference point.Servo motors are used as actuators to physically adjust the platform's position and orientation.

Materials and Parts

A table with estimated costs of your materials and parts and links to the source material at an online store such as sparkfun.com, adafruit.com, digikey.com, etc. The last row should provide the total cost.

Schematic Diagram

Design and Prototyping

During the brainstorming phase, we had a few ideas to work on using IMU and motors. Some of our top ideas were self-stabilizing platform and hand-gesture glove.

We decided to go forward with self-stabilizing platforms. We carried our prototyping phase with mainly two ideas in mind and then further narrowed our design plan.

Challenges
  • Attaching the servos together and to the platform was difficult. The servos don't provide much surface area to connect to and the platform was flimsy. We didn't want them permanently stuck together, so we decide on velcro strips so they could be removed and altered as needed. This ended up working out well.

  • Wanted to be able to align the platform in any direction and then keep it steady there rather than just level to the ground. In doing so, it would have created a sort of camera stabilizer for any direction. This was really difficult to get the servos to switch between checking different axes and in the end we were not able to figure it out.

  • A limitation of the servos is that they only go 180 degrees. This means there is a limit to the range of stabilization. Thought it might be better to use a DC motor, but the control is not as good.

  • The speed of the servos is also a limiting factor. They can only turn so fast, which makes it difficult to keep up with quick rotations of the platform.

Future Work Ideas
  • Augment the IMU data with information from other sensors such as cameras, LiDAR, or depth sensors to enhance perception and enable more robust stabilization in complex environments.

  • Enabling autonomous navigation and path planning. This could involve integrating mapping algorithms, localization techniques and decision-making algorithms for autonomous navigation.

  • Dynamic Payload handling : This could involve adaptive control algorithms that automatically adjust servo motor outputs to compensate for changes in payload characteristics.

Thoughts on Project

We really enjoyed this project. It allowed us to work with the IMU and take in real-time data. This is something we hadn't done before and thought it was interesting all of the applications it has. We also got to experiment with servos, which seem very useful. Even though we had worked with them before, it was a good refresher and a new way to use them. As with other projects in this class, it was a lot of fun to work with physical objects and get to build them. We had to construct the servos and platform to get the ability for it to move in 2 axes. Experimenting and designing how to do this was a new challenge. All around this was a fun project.

Fig1: Circuit Setup

Fig2: Circuit Setup

Demo for the project

BreadBoards

Servo Motors

Velcro Pads

Fig3: Schematic Diagram

Fig4: Self Stabilizing board

Fig4: Self Stabilizing Platform

Fig5: Self Stabilizing Platform

Fig6: Self Stabilizing Platform

Fig4: Self Stabilizing skateboard

This prototype shows a self-stabilizing skateboard that used 7Ah batteries and has motors to provide haptic feedback to balance the skateboard. This idea seemed innovative but we couldn't see its real-time implementations.

Fig5: Self Stabilizing Platform

This figure showed 6 servo motors connected together with their servo arms and has rods which will be 3D printed and they are attached to the stabilizing platform base to control the angle so that the object doesn't fall off. This design seemed appealing but the rods were pretty delicate to handle heavy objects.

Fig6: Self Stabilizing Platform

This figure was more promising than the previous prototype design we thought of doing. It has two wooden pieces or platform 3D printed that is attached with the arms of servo motor. It doesn't use any external battery connections apart from the one inbuilt in Arduino nano. The design is simple and reliable.

Fig7: Self Stabilizing Platform

The final design that we decided to move forward with was instead of using two platforms, we further simplified the design to one platform and we stick that to the arms of servo motor and it doesn't have any complex connection but with the breadboard.

Devanshi Patel || Eric Kirby