Self Stabilizing Still-Standing Bike

Abstract

This report presents the development of a control system for balancing a stationary bicycle. The system uses a gyro driven by a brushless motor to apply a stabilizing torque, enabling balance without any forward velocity. The project models the bicycle as an inverted pendulum, described using a nonlinear state-space representation. Roll angle estimation is achieved through a complementary filter fusing accelerometer and gyroscope data from an IMU. A cascade PID control structure regulates the motor current in response to the measured tilt. The control algorithm was developed for implementation on a National Instruments MyRIO platform using LabVIEW and then implemented on an ESP32 microcontroller as a standalone alternative due to hardware and software compatibility issues. Simulation results demonstrate that the controller is capable of stabilizing the bicycle within the physical limits of the hardware. Hardware and software compatibility issues between different bicycles in the Autobike project limited full experimental validation, and several directions for future development are identified and discussed.