Balance Control of a Novel Wheel-legged Robot: Design and Experiments

This paper presents a balance control technique for a novel wheel-legged robot. We first derive a dynamic model of the robot and then apply a linear feedback controller based on output regulation and linear quadratic regulator (LQR) methods to maintain the standing of the robot on the ground without moving backward and forward mightily. To take into account nonlinearities of the model and obtain a large domain of stability, a nonlinear controller based on the interconnection and damping assignment - passivity-based control (IDA-PBC) method is exploited to control the robot in more general scenarios. Physical experiments are performed with various control tasks. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed linear output regulator can maintain the standing of the robot, while the proposed nonlinear controller can balance the robot under an initial starting angle far away from the equilibrium point, or under a changing robot height.