Self-Balancing Unicycle System on Rough Road

Abstract

This system represents a mechatronic system, which contains all the essential components, to be considered a complete mechatronic system. In addition to that, this system represents a challenge in control and implementation, since it must adapt different conditions which are difficult to these systems, such as disturbances, slippage, and motion on rough road (that contains rocks, stones, and other miscellanies). The uniqueness of the SBU (Self-Balancing Unicycle) system has drawn interest from many researchers due to the unstable nature of the system.

The system is composed of motor located on a short link, in which this link is attached with a shaft by a roller joint, in which this joint allows a free movement of the link relative to the shaft that is compacted with two wheels (which are joined together by a fixed joint).

SBU system can be considered as an educational tool, since it can be applied for a wide range of classical and modern control techniques. These systems also have many applications, which range widely from robotics to human beings. In transportation, these systems have solid ground, especially in countries with large population that is interested in public transportation and environmental pollution.

In this project, the idea is to design, and prototype SBU system, by using modern control techniques such as state feedback, and interfacing it through PC computer, since the required from this project is testing the effectiveness of control system. The controller will be implemented using commercially available software environments for control system which are MATLAB® packages (SIMULINK libraries and xPC Target technique).