Study on Inertia Wheel Pendulum Applied to Self-Balancing Electric Motorcycle

Self-balancing electric motorcycles have been recently developed by high-tech corporations to reaffirm their vision of “enjoying the freedom of mobility”, i.e. riders will not have to put their feet on the ground when they stop. A stabilization system based on Inertia Wheel Pendulum (IWP) is a potential approach to this new concept motorcycle. The paper focuses on exploring effects of design parameters on dynamic performance of IWP. A prototype of IWP is implemented. The understanding of IWP is validated through simulation results as well as experimental results. The findings have shown that the prototype has been capable of self-balancing under a PID control algorithm.