A Hybrid Technique for Upward Stabilization and Control of Two Wheeled Self-Balancing Segway

Two wheeled Self-Balancing Segway, which works on the principle of inverted pendulum, is naturally unstable, nonlinear, and under actuated system. Self-Balancing means the capability of the Segway to balance itself on two wheels without falling. Therefore, the system has to be controlled to reach stability in this unstable state. The two wheeled Segway is considered important due to its applications in daily life. In this paper, a hybrid control system is proposed for upward stabilization and control of two wheeled Segway. The control design approaches proposed in the literature for Segway result in a large control effort which requires high torque causing the saturation of actuator field and ultimately failure of the controller. Controller designed using the proposed approach is able to reduce the control effort by 64% compared to the ones available in literature. Moreover, controller designed through the proposed approach is able to improve disturbance rejection for both pitch and yaw angles of the Segway. Simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach over the ones available in the literature.