Modeling and control for UW-Car in rough terrain

There has been an increasing interest in a kind of underactuated mechanical systems, mobile wheeled inverted pendulum (MWIP) models, which are widely used in the field of autonomous robotics and intelligent vehicles. A novel transportation system, UW-Car, which is composed of an MWIP system and a movable seat is proposed. The reduced-order dynamic model of a UW-Car system running in a rough terrain is obtained by applying Lagrangian motion equations. A sliding mode control approach is proposed based on the dynamic model. Comparing with the linear quadratic regulator (LQR) approach, the new method guarantees that a UW-Car system can run in a rough terrain while keeping the body upright and the seat on some fixed position. The theoretical results are finally demonstrated through numerical simulations.