Open-Source Tiny Two-Wheeled Inverted Pendulum Robot for Educational Purpose

Abstract

The education of control theory requires experimental verification and interesting examples to keep the students focused during classes. In this paper a tiny two-wheeled inverted pendulum robot is presented for this purpose. The prototyped robot can be used for education related to microcontroller programming, discrete control systems, signal filtering, PID controller, wind-up phenomena, and cascade control structure. The paper presents the simplicity of the construction, firmware, and control application of a two-wheeled inverted pendulum. The possibilities are presented using the well-known cascade control structure with PID controllers. Moreover, the Madgwick's algorithm has been implemented to provide satisfactory tilt angle measurement using an IMU sensor. The results presented show that the prototyped construction of a tiny two-wheeled inverted pendulum robot may be used successfully for education purposes. The project has been published using the CC BY-NC license on GitHub repository.