Qdeathstar:
@ardly, i wonder when they are moving around how much of that is programmed movement and how much of it is reactionary...Not the balance stuff but going straight, turning, ect, how are they deciding where it goes...
The cycling robot seems to be all based on PID loops. It was not autonomous its overall direction was controlled by radio. It is not clear how many of the robots navigate, I think a lot of them may be like the cyclebot.
I did find one robot whose movement was entirely based on reaction motors, braking them suddenly and getting one motor to act against another.
The mechanical expertise behind these robots is amazing, I think the programming must be pretty complex as well, maybe they use neural nets and AI technigues as well as algorithms.