That’s typical with those TT motors. No two run at the same speed for the same PWM, the L298N drops a couple of volts differently per channel, the floor and the wheel diameters differ, and all of it changes with battery voltage. A fixed trim only fits one battery level, as you saw. Swapping the motors and still drifting right points at something besides the motors too (wheel diameter, a caster, the floor).
Better motors won’t fix open loop. What fixes it is measuring the wheels: TT motors with encoder discs and slotted optical sensors cost a few pounds. Count ticks on both wheels and correct the PWM so the counts stay equal. A simple proportional correction is enough for a corridor:
from gpiozero import Motor, RotaryEncoder # or DigitalInputDevice per sensor
import time
left, right = Motor(17, 18), Motor(22, 23)
enc_l, enc_r = RotaryEncoder(5, 6), RotaryEncoder(13, 19)
base, kp = 0.7, 0.002
while not arrived():
err = enc_l.steps - enc_r.steps # +: left ahead
left.forward(max(0, min(1, base - kp * err)))
right.forward(max(0, min(1, base + kp * err)))
time.sleep(0.02)If one cheap optical sensor per wheel (no direction) is all you have, count pulses with a DigitalInputDevice callback instead, direction is known anyway. For really straight runs, add an MPU6050 gyro and hold the heading. And if they’re rebuilding, swap the L298N for a TB6612FNG: much smaller voltage drop, so the battery lasts longer too.
While they’re at it, send the encoder counts per trip to Hermetry. A rising left/right difference on the same route is an early sign of a wheel or gearbox going.