Development of a wheeled inverted pendulum robot and a pilot experiment with master students

Since 2007; at Waseda University, we have focused our research on developing advanced educational robotic tools to introduce the understanding of principles of Robot Technology (RT) to students at different educational levels. For this purpose; we have proposed the development of a two-wheeled inverted pendulum type mobile robot. In this paper, we present the development details of the Waseda Wheeled Vehicle No. 2 Refined (WV-2R) which is composed of two actuated wheels, a 32-bit micro-controller, a mobile base, and a remote controller. A state feedback control system has been implemented to assure the robustness of the dynamic performance of the robot. A set of experiments were carried out to validate the possible educational benefits. From the experimental results, we could validate the robustness of the control system as well as verify the possible educational functions that can be implemented with the WV-2R. Finally, a preliminary field experiment with master students is detailed and discussed.