LQR controller of one wheel robot stabilized by reaction wheel principle

Reactobot is a one-wheel robot developed at IIT Bombay. It is balanced by reaction wheel actuator suspended from the central axis. The Robot can get accelerated in forward or backward direction by pitching the pendulum mass within the wheel in the same direction. Turns can be- executed by tilting robot to right or left while in motion. In this paper, we describe multi-body dynamic model of the Reactobot. The mathematical model of Reactobot is developed using the Lagrangian constrained generalized formulation. Dynamic model is highly nonlinear and Jacobian linearization has been used to obtain a linear model for operation close to vertical rolling motion. LQR control scheme is proposed to design controller for linearised model. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of this scheme.