Student Researcher at the Laboratorium of Marvelous Mechanical Motum
The project
What control algorithm does the human brain use when balancing? This is not an easy question to answer, and it is one which our PI, Dr. Jason Moore, is interested in tackling. In an effort to contribute to the improvement of prosthetic limb motion, the Mechmotum laboratory is developing a simplified biomimetic of the balancing human body. The device also doubles as an educational tool for high school students.
What I did
In my research, I improved the electromechanical design of the inverted double pendulum shown above. This included developing motion control software in C++ with a user-friendly isolated controller package. We presented and documented all work, and contributed to the laboratory blog. We also tested the system and validated the software and hardware.
The robot shown above is controlled by an Arduino using encoders at each joint to close the feedback loop. Controller gains can be set in real time through serial communication via a Processing GUI.