Impressive low-cost 2-wheel balancer

This post at Hack a Day is well worth a look.  Robotics hobbyist Willy Wampa has built a very impressive 2-wheel (Segway-style) balancing robot, using common components: an Arduino with a motor shield, an IMU from SparkFun; and chassis and motors from Pololu.  He’s tuned his PID loop (based on open-source code) perfectly, as you can see in the video in the post; the thing looks rock-solid, even when it starts and stops, and even running on carpet.

I’ve always felt that before tackling dynamic balancing in bipeds, building a mini-Segway would be a good warm-up.  I confess that I haven’t gotten around to this yet, but when I do, you can believe I’m going to look to Wampa’s robot for inspiration.