Modeling of self-tilt-up motion for a two-wheeled inverted pendulum

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a two‐wheeled inverted pendulum with self‐tilt‐up motion ability. With this ability, the two‐wheeled inverted pendulum can erect without assistance, and then the vehicle can be autonomously deployed. The paper proposes an approach to achieve this self‐tilt‐up motion, which involves precessional motion.Design/methodology/approach – A flywheel is mounted inside the vehicle to perform high‐speed spinning. The flywheel and body of the vehicle are forced to move around a fixed point and precessional motion occurs. As a result of the precessional motion, a moment is synchronously generated to tilt the body up to the upright position. Since no external force is applied on this two‐wheeled inverted pendulum, it is called self‐tilt‐up motion. A 3D model and a prototype are built to validate this approach.Findings – The simulation and experimental results show that the self‐tilting‐up motion is successful.Research limitations/implications – This paper presents a sel...