Design and Control of a Two-Wheel Self-Balancing Robot using the Arduino Microcontroller Board

This paper reports the design, construction and control of a two-wheel self-balancing robot. The system architecture comprises a pair of DC motor and an Arduino microcontroller board; a single-axis gyroscope and a 2-axis accelerometer are employed for attitude determination. In addition, a complementary filter is implemented to compensate for gyro drifts. Electrical and kinematic parameters are determined experimentally; PID and LQR-based PI-PD control designs, respectively, are performed on the linearized equations of motion. Experimental results show that self-balancing can be achieved with PI-PD control in the vicinity of the upright position.