RC Arduino is a cool site that documents how to add an Arduino with gyro sensor to a RC car to make it more more controllable, basically "driving by wire", rather than directly, with the Arduino making sure it doesn't spin out.
They explain:
"All of the throttle and steering commands in the car in the video are coming from an onboard Arduino. The Arduino is reading the incoming signals from an (drivers) RC Receiver and also a gyroscope within the car. It is using this information to assist the driver by controlling the yaw of the car under acceleration, braking and cornering."
There are some other cool Arduino-based RC car project there, too, so check it out.
Comments
Well, this looks like what I designed just as a part of my final year project. I built an assisting system for my UGV. But that time Arduino was not released yet so it was a little problem to make it work properly... But I must admit, this is pretty far away from what I designed the day and outcome is impressive.
@Chris,
If I remember correctly there was a guy on the Parallax Robot Forum a few years ago who had used a Basic Stamp 2p and an accelerometer to do the same thing. Unfortunately the thread did not last very long, but I do have his original code on one of my computers somewhere.
Regards,
TCIII
Wow, this sounds pretty advanced. It is like traction control and stability management for RC cars. Real cars started having traction control as standard equipment only in the reason years, and only the higher end cars (especially ones by Germany and Japan such as BMW, Audi, Mitsubishi, Nissan), have really good traction control system.
I remember playing with RC cars when I was little. They were hard to control because everything was very jerky and they easily spin out.
Curses!!! This is going to make me want to get back into RC Car racing. I tried doing it pretty seriously for about 2-3 years, but just couldn't get my head around it. I've actually done quite a lot of full-size car racing/time trials, and am very good at it. But a huge part of the problem with RC is the completely lack of feel, and also the controls lag. Sounds like this solves that.
I don't like Electronic Stability Control on full-size performance cars, but this might be a better application.