Gyro I, II , III

The objective with this The Gyro project was to build robotic unicycle. My intention was to have the unicycle balance front to back by torque applied to the wheel and side to side by way of a moving weight, like the pole that a tight wire acrobat carries. I wanted to build the gyroscope “from scratch” it was going to be held in some form of gimbal and any out of vertical position was going to be measured either with a quadrature encoder or potentiometer on one or more of the axis.

Results so far:

Gyro II

Worked a little. But was hard to balance the motor and flywheel. Overall this design was too complicated and fragile and was dropped.

Both Gyro I and II used the bearings as a conductive path to the motor. Although this was great way to get power though a rotating joint, it seemed to me to be a bad design. In that if there was arching between the bearing and the bearing race pitting and or sticking could result limited the life of the device.

Gyro I

Produced almost no center fugal force, and a lot of vibration. It is basically a hobby motor inside of a length of metal gas pipe. One end is welded closed with holes for the motor shaft and screws to secure the motor. The other end is a machined plastic cap with a shaft and sealed bearing. This design was dropped.

Gyro III

Balance and power were the objectives with Gyro III. So far, the results have been promising, good balance and “lots” of force.