Dynamic Analysis and Control of Lego Mindstorms NXT Bicycle

The paper is inspired from a challenging experiment conducted with undergraduate students for bachelor project within Automatic Control and Computer Engineering Faculty, Iasi. A bicycle type system was implemented, analyzed and some control strategies were implemented and tested in order to self-stabilize the system. The bicycle study is enjoyable both to undergraduate students and researchers because it uses a "hi-tech" relevant concrete example. This work encompasses and uses a full range of system-theoretic aspects which covers knowledge from analytical, computational and experimental point of view. The dynamic description of the bicycle is done using a set of dynamic equations that describes the location and orientation of the body, considering four rigid subsystems that form the bicycle. The control issues were conducted in order to follow a desired forward speed using classical PI controller, followed by the LQR approach for steering angle.