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Research Notes (2)

A project log for RC Battle Spinning Top

A spinning top using a Hemispherical Gimbal Wheel drive system

roman-vRoman V 06/08/2014 at 23:080 Comments

Since this toy will be remote controlled, the operator (the lucky kid who gets to play with this) will want to steer this toy in a direction of their choosing. The problem with this is having a frame of reference. How would the spinning top know which way is left or right, which way is forward. I could use a Gyro, but they're often difficult to take measurements from due to noise and offsets. Also, how will the servos react fast enough if they're also caught spinning all the time?

An Idea would be to have a motor that will drive the PCB to spin in the opposite direction. to match the speed of the spinning top itself but reverse. so that the PCB from the operator's frame of reference, would be stationary. By placing a marker on the PCB, this would provide an excellent way to tell the operator which way if forward, left right, and back. 
A problem to achieving this comes again to how well the Gyro is, whether it gets a sudden shock as the spinning top hits a wall. or if the filter isn't reliable and causes the PCB to slowly drift. 

A solution could be to use a series of Accelerometers to measure to measure centrifugal forces of the spinning PCB, and then applying speed to the motor to spin down the PCB so that it is stationary. Of course this is still an idea and research needs to be done to see if this is viable. 

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