Development of a 2 wheel balancing robot

Abstract

This report presents the development of a 2 wheel balancing robot using a state space modelling approach. In control engineering, a state-space representation is a mathematical model of a physical system based on a set of input, output and state variables related by first-order differential equations. Once the robot is physically modelled using the state space equation, we are able to determine the state variables to control to enable stability. The main components used in the robot are a gyroscope and accelerometer for angle readings, while 2 encoder based motors are used as actuators for movement and collecting movement feedback. A Texas Instrument launchpad will serve as the microcontroller to carry out the controller algorithm. A Linear Quadratic Regular (LQR) algorithm is designed as it is a commonly used digital control algorithm using a state space approach to process the state variables. System dynamics are simulated on Matlab to simulate actual performance to collect the appropriate feedback gains required for each state variable. Finally an android based application is implemented to wirelessly connect with the microcontroller using Bluetooth. This allows maneuvring of the robot wirelessly, rapid prototyping instead of hardcoding and enables collecting of state variable data from the robot in real time. The end product is a robot that is able to balance with extremely little oscillation and able to withstand gentle forces, showing that the state-space based robotic control design and implementation is successful.