SELF BALANCING ROBOT

Rajan Gupta, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Madras

INTRODUCTION
This report is focused towards transportation
industry; affordable personalized mobile vehicle for
physically challenged to be more precise. This is
being achieved by making a scaled down version of
a two-wheeled platform which can intuitively be
ridden by tilting the body in desired direction of
travel. Standard literature, Inverted Pendulum, will
be studied on experimental basis with above stated
focus.

THEORY
1. Transfer Function
The closed loop transfer function can be represented
as
!(s)
U(s)
=
G(s)
1+G(s)C(s)


where C(s) = k
d
s
2
+k
p
s +k
i
, and
G(s) =
ml
q
s
s
3
+
b(I +ml
2
)
q
s
2
!
(M +m)mgl
q
s !
bmgl
q

!(s) is the angle of tilt, U(s) is external force,
C(s) is a controller and G(s) is a open loop
representation.

2. Determination of Tilt Angle
! = cos
!1
(
bsin"
a
2
+b
2
!2abcos"
)
where ! is the tilt angle from vertical, ! is the
mount angle of sensor from surface, a is the height
of the sensor from ground when system is vertical
and b is distance of the sensor from ground in the
direction of travel of rays.

EXPERIMENTS
1. Sensor
Analog distance sensor was used to detect the tilt by
measuring aligned distance of a fixed point on the
setup from the ground. Various filters like average,
mode and median were tried with different filter-tap
sizes to remove the noise.

Figure 1: 10-tap median filter

It was found out that median filter, which finds the
median of data samples in real time, with 10-tap
size was better off as compared to other filters in
terms of noise removal, time delay and
computational resources required.

2. Maximum Angle of Tilt
Impulsive external forces were given to determine
the maximum angle of tilt beyond which system
will not be able to stabilize about desired
equilibrium. As a result of these experiments, it was
found to be approximately 12 about mean
position.

3. Position Drift
It is a translational drift that incurs while system is
trying to balance about its equilibrium position. It
was calculated by integrating RPM, assumed to be
proportional to the PWM output of the PID
controller, for a period of 25 seconds.

Figure 2: Position drift as in one of the experiments

The drift in experiments conducted, on an average,
was 24cms.

4. Payload
Experimental setup was tested for different
payloads below 2.45kg , placed at different heights.

Table 1: Range of payload for different heights
k
p
k
i
k
d

Weight ( gms )
Height
( cms )
Min Max
0.68 2.56 0.08 250 2450 50
0.765 2.88 0.09 300 2450 50
0.85 3.2 0.1 500 >2450 50
0.935 3.52 0.11 700 >2450 50

0.68 2.56 0.08 1000 >2450 25
0.765 2.88 0.09 1700 >2450 25
0.85 3.2 0.1 >2450 - 25
0.935 3.52 0.11 >2450 - 25

0.68 2.56 0.08 500 2450 38
0.765 2.88 0.09 750 >2450 38
0.85 3.2 0.1 1200 >2450 38
0.935 3.52 0.11 1450 >2450 38
Its interesting to note that the setup is stable for a
wide range of payload for specific set of PID
constants.

5. Implementation
Processor: Arduino Mega2560, an open-source
electronic prototyping platform, with
Atmega128 16Mhz onboard
Motors: 200 RPM, 12V DC, Maximum Torque
32kgcm, No-load current 0.8A, Metal Gearbox
and Weight of 180gms
Sensor: Analog distance sensor with range of
3.1V at 3cm - 0.3V at 40cm
Motor Driver: Upto 20A inrush current
delivery, 6V-18V operation and simple
connectivity to IO pins of MCU
Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable 12.6V
4000mAh, provides more current without any
major drop in voltage, discharge capacity upto
8A, light weight and small size
Hardware: Aluminum structure suitable for
strength and affordability. Setup was designed
in AutoCAD before manufacturing
PCB Design: Arduino shield was designed in
PCB layout and CAM program, Eagle

6. PID Controller Tuning

Table 2: Effects of increasing each of the controller
parameters
Response Rise
Time
Overshoot Settling
Time
S-S
Error
k
p

Decrease Increase NT Decrease
k
i

Decrease Increase Increase Eliminate
k
d

NT Decrease Decrease NT
Where NT means no-definite trend or minor change

Steps for designing a PID controller are:
Determine what characteristics of the system
needs to be improved
Use k
p
to decrease the rise time
Use k
d
to reduce the overshoot and settling time
Use k
i
to eliminate the steady-state error

CONCLUSIONS
Scaled down version of personalized mobile
platform was designed, manufactured and analyzed
with limited resources available. It balances with tilt
error of 5 . Range of payload for different heights
were quantified. However, there are limitations.
Such technology is suitable only for flat grounds.
Project can be extended to robot formations,
surviellence body and ball balancing robots.

REFERENCES
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A., }0E: A Nobile, Inveiteu Penuulum, !"""
$%&'(&)*+,'( -' !'./(*%+&0 "01)*%,'+)(2 3,04562 7-4
82 89:;8854
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