Balancing control of a one-wheel transportation vehicle: Gyrocycle

This paper presents the implementation and control of a one-wheel transportation vehicle called Gyrocycle. Gyrocycle is designed to be a future personal vehicle to carry a human operator that stands on and drive it. The vehicle uses the gyro effect induced by two flywheels to maintain balance itself. One of critical condition for the balancing stability is to control the tilt angle of the flywheels. However, the flywheels tend to lean against one direction. This leads to the instability of the system. To remedy this behavior, a PD control method with gain scheduling algorithm is used for controlling the balancing angle. Its balancing control performance is empirically confirmed.