The PID balancer is a baseline agent designed to check out Upkie's physical capabilities. The robot balances with its wheels only, following PI feedback from the head pitch and wheel odometry to wheel velocities, plus a feedforward non-minimum phase trick for smoother transitions from standing to rolling. The code is factored into wheel controller, doing the actual balancing, and a leg controller holding the hip and knee joints in place.

Simulation

To test this agent in simulation, run:

bazel run //pid_balancer:bullet

Real robot

To run this agent on a real Upkie, you can use the Makefile at the root of the repository:

$ make build
$ make upload
$ ssh your-upkie
user@your-upkie:~$ make run_pid_balancer