Gyroscopic stabilization of an unmanned bicycle

There are two theoretical methods by which a two wheeled vehicle oriented in tandem can be stabilized: dynamic stabilization and control moment gyroscope (CMG) stabilization. Dynamic stabilization utilizes tactical steering techniques to trigger a lean in the vehicle in the intended direction for balancing, while CMG stabilization employs the reactive precession torque of a high speed flywheel about an axis that will act to balance the vehicle. Of these two, CMG stabilization offers greater advantages for static vehicles. This paper proposes a first order sliding mode controller (SMC) design to control the CMG and stabilize a bicycle at zero-forward velocity. This study also compares the SMC method to a PID controller to validate the advantages of the SMC controller for the highly non-linear system dynamics of static stabilization. The result of two experimental setups are presented and discussed. The first experimental platform is a single degree of freedom (DOF) inverted pendulum and the second is a three DOF bicycle.