Multibody Dynamics Modeling and Control of Wheelchair Balancing System

An electric wheelchair has the potential to increase the mobility of people with disabilities. The purpose of this study is to obtain the dynamic model and control of the self-balancing wheelchair. Based on the wheeled inverted pendulum principle, a state-feedback control is designed to stabilize the wheelchair in the upright position. Simscape Multibody is used to model and simulate the system dynamics. An obstacle on the ground and different slope angles are used to evaluate the control system’s performance. Two types of controller namely LQR and LQR-PID are studied. Among the two controllers, LQR-PID controller exhibits better performance. LQR-PID controller is able to maintain the wheelchair at the equilibrium point (zero points) better than using the LQR controller.