Arduino + Lego NXT

..Are you aware of any other method?

To do it right, it sounds like you need an accelerometer, too. David Anderson provides a pretty detailed description of how he did this on his nBot web site

He explains, "The gyroscope and accelerometer are combined with complementary filters to provide an inertial reference sensor. The ADXL202 accelerometer provides accurate static tilt information, when the robot is not accelerating. The gyroscope can be integrated to provide accurate dynamic tilt information, but the integration tends to drift over time. Combining the two sensors provides a robust inertial measurement."

But, there are apparently a number of different ways to make a balancing robot. I've heard of at least one person who managed to do it using distance sensors to figure out the tilt based on the distance of the sensor to the ground.

That's interesting!
Very nice idea (and very nice implementation!).

In my opinion an angle sensor can be enough (it certainly is enough in Matlab simulations).... and it is certainly less expensive than two sensors (BTW, I'm saying that because cheapness was one of the aim of the project).

The robot works pretty well even with only a gyroscope... if you start your own project keep in mind that an angle sensor (or maybe gyro + accelerometer) is better.

you've been blogged:

http://arduino.cc/blog/?p=89

/d

Thank you very much! :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

Well done,
Its a really nice project and great platform for control scheme design.

I have one question if you don't mind me picking your brain. How did you do the numerical integration? On the arduino itself? or integrate the signal before the arduino a/d?

If on the arduino what algorithm did you use? and what time step did you use?

Thanks and well done again.

David

The integration happens inside Arduino.
I preferred not to do hardware integration because I hoped that software could give me more flexibility.

I chose the fastest sampling time I could, which is 4 ms (--> 250 Hz).
I first used the rectangle method for integration but now I've preferred the trapezoid method to minimize the error: what I've found out is that most of the error comes from (1) the sensor and (2) ADC approximation.

Anyone going to replicate this robot should use an angle sensor (maybe I2C based) instead of a gyroscope; integration is bringing avoidable error.

Thanks,

I'm think I'm going to have to do integration for another project. (control of a flexible link). So nice to see its possible with the arduino. :slight_smile:

David

this is awesome.

Where can i find how to connect this motors to the arduino? or how it works the protocol used by NXT

I'm making available my thesis as a free download (CC license) here:
http://trive.dyndns.org/tesi_web.pdf.
(Please report if the link gets broken)

Unfortunately it's in italian (description of NXT connectors is on page 59-60) and it's mostly about the theoretical part of the problem.

What you need to do to drive NXT motors is to:

  • understand NXT connector, which has 6 wires:

  • Motor signal 1 (from 0 to 9V)

  • Motor signal 2 (from 0 to 9V)

  • Ground

  • Encoder power (5v)

  • Encoder signal 1 (0 to 5V)

  • Encoder signal 2 (0 to 5V)

  • hack your NXT connector (you can do that using a RJ-12 connector)

  • use a L293D to give enough amperage to the motors (you cannot drive them directly from Arduino)

  • use a 9V voltage stabilizer to power the L293D: it must handle enough amperes (1 or more reccomended).

  • use an interrupt to handle the encoder signal (if needed): you can download my code and look at the out() function.

This is exactly what I am planning to do, I am glad I found this as my guide. Thansk for sharing.

And that would be my first robot.

Your link to tesi_web.pdf is broken. Have you published your circuit and other details anywhere else :'(?

Great project! Why is it not call Segduino!?

You might be interested in the project I am working on at the moment, simply because its using an Accel (3axis) and a gyro.

http://www.eclipseaudioservices.co.uk/extras/helicopter.html
http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1229733416

Using Kalman filtering to remove the jitter, and to correct for the drift of the gyro I used the demo code for my sensors and bits from here: MAV-blog : Kalman filtering of IMU data

I will be putting the code for the helicopter online soon, but it needs tidying up first.

You should try making one with just one wheel - that would great!

Could you give some more information on how exactly you made the connection from Arduino to the NXT motors?

how would you connect a servo to arduino?
i tryin to figure that out ever sience march >_>

Hi,
great job. I'm new to Arduino and I've got to this from Lego NXT. I think Arduino is much more powerful and flexible than NXT, but I love Lego technich to build, and I already have a good assortment of parts. So I was looking for the way to use Lego elements (motors, sensors...) with Arduino. Your work looks great. I'll try it.
By the way, do you have the schematics of the Power Funcitions motors? Have you connected them to Arduino?
Thanks.

Here is a document that might interest who wants to connect an Arduino to a LEGO NXT motor.

Also, my thesis on Arduway has been published on Scribd:

Hope this helps someone out there, bye!
Happy 2010.

How did you connect the NXT servos to the Arduino? I've been looking for a pinout of the NXT parts.

This was Awesome!
I'm new to Arduino, though I'll try to make one of these soon
Kudos! ;D