There has been a lot of self-balancing robot builds in the lab. While impressive, it was getting a bit samey. Something new and fresh was needed. Something bigger. Enter: The Bonler.
The robot before being reworked
It's an old hoverboard converted into a self balancing robot, with the plan of having a skeleton stand on top of it for the Cortège. With an LQR for control and some tinkering with the communication with the drivers to get telemetry fast enough, it is very solid. The torque of the motors and fine-tuneable model means it can control itself well even with a very short distance between the wheels and the center of mass.
Of course, just as it started working really well, catastrophe struck. Due to some unfortunate wire routing and a misconfigured control parameter, the machine ran amok and killed itself by ramming into a table, pinching some cables and shorting the motor phases.
There was violence, a flash and then silence
New drivers are being soldered, the Bonler will be back.