| Our Team In January of 2004, we were assembled together as a team of Electrical Engineering students with the sole goal of making a working Pendubot. We were all acquaintenances of each other on some level, but little did we know how much time we would be spending in each others' company. We went from all..... continued |
The Pendubot The Pendubot is a two-linked inverted pendulum actuated by a single motor. The links are connected to each other by a rotational joint, and the base of one link is connected to the motor. Control of the Pendubot is available only at the base of one of the links, thus the challenge of the project is to balance the top link.... continued |
| Research Before we were able to even begin considering building any hardware, we had to do background research on our problem. Research consisted of two main parts - theoretical implementation techniques and actual physical implementation techniques. Only after thorough theoretical research was conducted were we able to.... continued |
Hardware In order to complete our project, we needed a motor, two links, optical encoders, and all the supporting miscellaneous hardware to get it all working together. Through our research, we were able to determine what we thought were ideal components for each..... continued |
| Software A bunch of hardware would not do much if not for some sort of intelligence controlling it all. Our computer had to be able to simutaneously read data incoming from the two optical encoders, do caculations, and then send an instruction to the motor to turn the attached link. Our software had to.... continued |
Results As far as we were concerned, the three most important days of the semester were Bonus Day, Final Competition Day, and the Final Presentation Day. While we did not fully achieve our goal of completely outperforming the other teams, we... continued |
.:/ Welcome to Group H's Website /:.
Group H, as we are known by our peers, is a team of electrical engineering seniors at Clemson University. Over the course of the semester we have researched, built, and tested a working Pendubot for our senior design project. We have been in competition with other groups all working towards the same goal, culminating in a final competition between the groups that will determine which has worked together most efficiently. Group H's primary goal for the entire project is to build the fastest, most innovative Pendubot of all the teams by most effectively implementing thorough research and innovative ideas. As it turns out, a groups needs more than raw intellect and effort in order to achieve this goal.
With this website we hope to demonstrate how much work we have put into this project. After perusing our site thoroughly, a visitor should have a good grasp of a basic mechatronics concepts and perhaps learn how to build a Pendubot as well.
Our site is divided into several sections designed to make your browsing experience painless and effective. To read more about our group or our project, please click on Introduction and read about our group and our task. For information about the hardware or software design of our project, please check out those sections. Multimedia pictures and videos are available at the Gallery. Finally if you are interested in only the results, please click on Results. You'll find a detailed log of our work, starting from the very beginning at the planning stages through to the final results of our competition.