A Development and Prototyping of a Two-Wheeled Self- Balancing Robot

Abstract

Mobile robotics is a branch of robotics and within the branch the category of selfbalancing
robots is of particular interest as these robots show the promise of navigating difficult
terrain in a manner like humans and can be used to platform for investigating autonomous
control systems. This paper aims to summarize the development of a two-wheeled self-balancing
robot as a case study to demonstrate the application of computer control systems in physical
systems. A complementary filter is used with a triple-axis gyroscope and accelerometer to
accurately gauge the rotation of the two-wheeled robot and provide the data to a Proportional-
Integral-Derivative (PID) program which controls the power to the motors accordingly to control
its tilt and achieve self-balancing. In short, the robot manages to achieve self-balancing within a
small tilt angle range, however, design flaws such as the sensor falling off at larger tilt angles
cause instability at larger tilt angles. In future work, more complex control algorithms can be
employed, and the effect of different robot builds can be thoroughly explored