Robust Stabilization of Underactuated Two-Wheeled Balancing Vehicles on Uncertain Terrains with Nonlinear-Model-Based Disturbance Compensation

Two-wheeled inverted pendulum (TWIP) vehicles are prone to lose their mobility and postural stability owing to their inherently unstable and underactuated dynamic characteristics, specifically when they encounter abruptly changed slopes or ground friction. Overcoming such environmental disturbances is essential to realize an agile TWIP-based mobile platform. In this paper, we suggest a disturbance compensation method that is compatible with unmanned TWIP systems in terms of the nonlinear-model-based disturbance observer, where the underactuated dynamic model is transformed to a fully actuated form by regarding the gravitational moment of the inverted pendulum as a supplementary pseudo-actuator to counteract the pitch-directional disturbances. Consequently, it enables us to intuitively determine the disturbance compensation input of the two wheels and the pitch reference input accommodating to uncertain terrains in real time. Through simulation and experimental results, the effectiveness of the proposed method is validated.