Design, Implementation, and Control of a Wheel-Based Inverted Pendulum

Control of an inverted pendulum is a classical example of the stabilisation problem pertaining to systems that are unstable by nature. The reaction wheel and the motor act as actuators, generating the torque needed to stabilise the system and counteract inevitable disturbances. This paper begins by describing the design and physical implementation of a wheel-based inverted pendulum. Subsequently, the process of designing and testing the proportional-integral-derivative (PID) and unknown input Kalman-filter-based linear quadratic regulator (LQR) controllers is performed. In particular, the design and pre-validation were carried out in the Matlab/Simulink environment. The final validation step was realised using a constructed physical pendulum, with a digital controller implemented using the STM32 board. Finally, a set of various physical disturbances were introduced to the system to show the high reliability and superiority of the proposed Kalman-filter-based LQR strategy.