Riderless bicycle with gyroscopic balancer controlled by FSMC and AFSMC

A Riderless bicycle has been developed with a gyroscopic balancer controller by a Fuzzy Sliding Mode Controller (FSMC) and an Adaptive Fuzzy Sliding Mode Controller (AFSMC). The FSMC controller was first implemented because it has better performance on controlling nonlinear systems than the one with PID control. The FSMC can also reduce the chattering phenomenon caused by SMC and the effect of linearizing a nonlinear system. Compared with other balancers, the gyroscopic balancer has a couple of advantages, such as faster system response, lower mass ratio of balancer to bicycle and relatively larger moment. To demonstrate the attributes stated above, we designed and conducted experiments, including the balancing of unmoving bicycle, unmoving bicycle with external impacts, as well as the bicycle moving forward and turning. The experimental results show that the bicycle can overcome jolts, uneven terrain and external disturbances. Furthermore, since the results of experiments are consistent with the ones of the simulation, it validates the derived bicycle dynamics model with the gyroscopic balancer and proves its robustness. However, the system's ability to resist continuous disturbance is not strong enough because of the limitation on the tilt angle of the gyroscopic balancer. Hence, we modified the control strategy by using AFSMC despite the fact that the FSMC performed better than PID control. From the simulations in Section IV, it shows that the AFSMC has better performance at resisting continuous disturbances than FSMC does. Furthermore, the abilities to balance the unmoving bicycle or moving bicycle are no less than FSMC. Thus, the AFSMC is employed to replace the FSMC. The designs of adaptive law and estimation law of AFSMC are based on the Lyapunov function to ensure the stability of the system. Experiments of the bicycle controlled by AFSMC are currently being conducted.