Stabilization and control of the motion of a rolling disk by using two rotors fixed along its axis Original Research Article

This work deals with the stabilization and control of a system which is composed of a disk rolling on a plane, a slender rod that is fixed along the diskʹs axis with its middle point fixed in the diskʹs center, and two identical rotors fixed in the rod equally spaced along both sides of the disk. Each of the rotors is rotating in a plane that is perpendicular to the plane of the disk. In addition, these planes are perpendicular to each other (see Fig. 1). A kind of an inverse control strategy is proposed under which the motion of the disk is stabilized and is able asymptotically to track any given smooth ground trajectory.