International Journal of Science, Engineering and Technology Research (IJSETR), Volume 5, Issue 2, February 2016

Design and Fabrication of Automatic Balancing Bicycle

Mukeshkumar Prasad 1, Nilesh W. Nirwan2

1 Asst. Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Wainganga College of Engineering and Management,
Near Gumgaon Railway Station, Wardha Road, Nagpur, Maharashtra, India
2 Asst. Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Wainganga College of Engineering and Management,
Near Gumgaon Railway Station, Wardha Road, Nagpur, Maharashtra, India

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Abstract: case of a bicycle, the bicycle is a rigid body which can

rotate around its contact point with the ground.
This paper reports to design and build a Although a bicycle motion has multiple degrees of
bicycle prototype that is capable of driving and freedom, the particular type of motion which this project
balancing without a rider. The Automatic Balancing aims to stabilize is this tilt angle around the point of
bicycle will employ a control system to keep itself from contact with the ground relative to the direction of
falling over while in motion, and be propelled by a gravity.
motor. The goal of this project was to build a two-
inline-wheel bicycle prototype capable of balancing 2. BACKGROUND
itself using a reaction wheel. This robotic bicycle is
able to drive and also come to a complete stop without A bicycle is inherently unstable and without appropriate
losing its balance. In order to maintain balancing, the control, it is uncontrollable and cannot be balanced.
robot reads sensor input to detect tilt angle and There are several different methods for balancing of
correctly reacts to maintain a steady vertical position. robot bicycles, such as the use of gyroscopic stabilization
Sensor data is fed into a control system which outputs by Beznos et al. in 1998 Gallaspy in 1999, moving. of the
a balancing torque to a motor spinning the reaction Centre Of Gravity (COG) or mass balancing by Lee and
wheel. The requirements include that the bicycle Ham in 2002, and steering control by Tanaka and
should be capable of accelerating, driving in a Murakami in 2004. A very well-known self-balancing
straight line and stopping without falling. robot bicycle, Murata Boy, was developed by Murata in
2005. Murata Boy uses a reaction wheel inside the robot
Keywords: Flywheel Balanced bicycle,Gyroscopic as a torque generator, as an actuator to balance the
effect, Balancing control, 3 axis-accelerometer bicycle. The reaction wheel consists of a spinning rotor,
whose spin rate is nominally zero. Its spin axisis fixed to
the bicycle, and its speed is increased or decreased to
1. INTRODUCTION generate reaction torque around the spin axis. Reaction
wheels are the simplest and least expensive of all
Bicycles are a common form of exercise, recreation momentum-exchange actuators. Its advantages are low
and transportation used by billions. They can also serve cost, simplicity, and the absence of ground reaction.
to provide physical therapy, as they are a low impact Itsdisadvantages are that it consumes more energy and
form of exercise that can train balance, strength, stamina cannot produce large amounts of torque.In another
and coordination. Though one may consider riding a approach proposed by Gallaspy the bicycle can be
bicycle to be a fairly simple task, this is not the case for balanced by controlling the torque exerted on the
many people. This includes young children, adults who steering handlebar. Based on the amount of roll, a
have never learned to ride a bicycle, injured people, or controller controls the amount of torque applied to the
people suffering from developmental or cognitive handlebar to balance the bicycle. Advantages of such a
disabilities. A system that could provide balancing system include low mass and low energy consumption.
assistance to a bicycle rider without otherwise affecting Disadvantagesinclude the ground reaction force it
the experience of riding a bicycle could provide great requires andits lack of robustness against large roll
benefit to these groups of individuals. Such a system disturbance.
could be used both as a teaching tool, and as a physically
therapeutic device.
This problem of balancing a bicycle is analogous to what 3. OBJECTIVE
is known as the invertedPendulum problem. An inverted
pendulum is a pendulum which has its mass above its Challenges over controlling the bicycle:
pivot .The pendulum can be anything forms a simple Balancing the two wheeler bicycle without support of
mass and rod, to a full system. While a normal pendulum any extra legs or wheels is one of the biggest challenges
is stable, an inverted pendulum is inherently unstable, for human also from long time.
and must be actively balanced to remain upright. In the

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ISSN: 2278 – 7798 All Rights Reserved © 2016 IJSETR
 International Journal of Science, Engineering and Technology Research (IJSETR), Volume 5, Issue 2, February 2016

A bicycle remains upright when it is steered so

that the ground reaction forces exactly balance all the
otherinternal and external forces it experiences, such as
gravitational if leaning, inertial or centrifugal if in a turn,
gyroscopic if being steered, and aerodynamic if in a
crosswind. Steering may be supplied by a rider or, under
certain circumstances, by the bike itself. One other way
that a bicycle can be balanced, with or without locked
steering, is by applying appropriate torques between the
bike and
rider similar to the way a gymnast can swing up from
hanging straight down on uneven parallel bars, a
person can start swinging on a swing from rest by Fig.4.1: Conceptual design: Automatic balanced
pumpingtheir legs, or a double inverted pendulum can bicycle using flywheel
be controlled with an actuator only at the elbow. A
bicycle remains upright when it is steered so that the The flywheel design employs a flywheel which
ground reaction forceexactly balance all the other rotates about an axis parallel to the bicycle’s frame. This
internal and external forces it experiences, such as design models the bicycle as a pendulum with a fixed
gravitational if leaning, inertial or centrifugal if in a turn, pivot where the bicycle wheels meet the floor. As the
gyroscopic if being steered, and aerodynamic if in a bicycle begins to fall to one side, a motor mount to the
crosswind. Steering may be supplied by a rider or, under bicycle exerts a torque on the flywheel, causing a
certain circumstances, by the bike itself. This automatic reactionary torque on the bicycle, which restores the
balancing is generated by a combination of several bicycle’s balance.
effects that depend on the The flywheel design has several advantages.
geometry, mass distribution, and forward speed of the This design is very stable: the bicycle can balance even in
bike. Tires, suspension, steering damping, and frame a stationary position. The mathematical model of this
flex can also influence it, especially in motorcycles. system is the least complex of the considered designs.
Due to the simplicity of the design, the model would
most likely be the closest to reality of the three designs.
4. DESCRIPTION OF SYSTEM As a result of the relative math simplicity and the ease of
starting and stopping, the controller would be
In order to meet the design requirements, relativelystraightforward to implement. This design
potential designs for controlling the balance of the would also allow the bicycle to travel in a relatively
bicycle were developed and will be explained in this straight line with only small deviations.
section. The three designs are described below with One of the main disadvantages of this design is
particular attention given to how well they meet the that it does not likely permit easy steering, especially for
selection criteria: physical complexity, power higher speeds, considering that the PID gains will be
requirements, programming code complexity, ease of optimized for straightline travel. Also, the frame would
turning/steering, math complexity, deviation from a have to be altered, causing the design to look less similar
straight line, cost, and closeness to resembling a bicycle. to a bicycle than others.
The level of difficulty is related to the number of The final design of the Automatic balancing
motors and sensors required, the reaction time required, bicycle is described in this section. Each subsection
and starting and stopping. Finally, power requirements explains one part of the design, including control
include the battery necessary to provide the system with overview, balance system, propulsion and steering
10 continuous minutes of power supply (the original system, and bicycle frame. All components discussed in
power supply requirement; it has now been changed to 5 this section.
minutes). The required battery is dependent on the
weight of the model, number of motors needed for that 4.1.OVERVIEW
design, and the torque demanded of the motor(s) for the
control system. Based on the design requirements, there were
two options for what bicycle frame to use for this
project: a child-sized bicycle or a smaller frame built
from scratch. In the end, it was decided to build a small
scale frame from scratch due to cost considerations and
space considerations. Due to the high mass of a child-
sized bicycle, the flywheel motor and associated
controller required to balance it would be large and
costly, and would not fit within the budget of this project.
The whole bicycle is constructed with the help
of aluminium angles and arrangements to mount drive
motor and keeping electrical circuitry. The cycle is low-
lying so as to make its centre of mass low.

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ISSN: 2278 – 7798 All Rights Reserved © 2016 IJSETR
 International Journal of Science, Engineering and Technology Research (IJSETR), Volume 5, Issue 2, February 2016

Flywheel is made of mild steel, and it is sufficiently heavy

enough to provide enough reactionary torque in the high The processing unit used is Atmel ATMega16
torque motor attached to the vertical microcontroller unit which is a versatile EEPROM. It has
aluminiumangles.The flywheel is mounted on an axis four I/O (Input / Output) ports, onboard ADC (Analog to
parallel to the length of the bicycle. As the bicycle tilts, a Digital Converter) and PWM (PulseWidth Modulation)
motor applies a torque to the flywheel, which applies a outputs for motor control. It can be programmed easily
reactionary torque on the bicycle to re-balance. A with minimum hardware requirements which make it
microcontroller implements a PID control algorithm extremely popular in robotics applications. Here it
based on the measured tilt angle to determine the performs the following functions:
required torque for the motor to apply to the flywheel.
 ADC conversion of outputs of Rate Gyro and
4.2. CONTROL OVERVIEW Accelerometer.
The control of the bicycle is divided into two parts:  Processing the input signals
balancing controlled by a microcontroller and steering
 Periodic recalibration of gyro
and propulsion remotely controlled by an operator. The
two control systems are described in further detail  Display of angle & other data.
below, and the entire system is illustrated in a fig.
 Control of actuator unit

Fig.4.2: System block diagram

The AT mega 16 (the selected microcontroller) reads the

output of the accelerometer and the gyroscope via the 4.4. ANGLE SENSOR
12-bit analog-to-digital converter, and interprets the
resulting values as a measurement of the bicycle’s tilt Tilt sensing is the crux of this project and the most
angle. The measured angle is implemented into a PID difficult part as well.
algorithm, and outputs a corresponding voltage to the
motor controller. The motor controller then outputs a  Triple Axis Accelerometer ADXL335
voltage to the DC motor, which is geared down, and
ultimately actuates the flywheel. A torque is exerted on  Dual Axis Gyroscope IDG500
the flywheel, and a reaction torque is exerted on the
bicycle. This means in all aircraft with exception of To measure the bicycle’s tilt angle, it was decided to use
agricultural and small general aviation airplanes, where an accelerometer and a gyroscope, and to combine them
the installation of a movable landing gear would increase using a complimentary filter. Integrating these two
the costs beyond the requirements of the aircraft sensors proves useful when calculating the bicycle’s tilt
category. Landing gear extraction is a primary operation angle. Accelerometers may be used to measure the angle
and always its actuation has high redundancy. with respect to gravity directly, but they are highly
susceptible to noise.

4.3. MICROCONTROLLER UNIT

The microcontroller selected to control the

balance ofthe bicycle is the AT mega 16.

Fig.4.4: Triple Axis Accelerometer ADXL335

Fig.4.3:ATMega16

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ISSN: 2278 – 7798 All Rights Reserved © 2016 IJSETR
 International Journal of Science, Engineering and Technology Research (IJSETR), Volume 5, Issue 2, February 2016

Gyros are less susceptible to noise, but they revolved around the use of bicycles, or provision of
measure angular velocity. As a result, the gyro output pedestrian facilities. However many campus
must be integrated in order to obtain a measurement of environments also experience traffic congestion, parking
angular position. This integration yields an error known difficulties and pollution from fossil-fuelled vehicles. It
as drift, a drawback of the gyro. Integrating both sensors appears that pedal power alone has not been sufficient
allows one to easily combine the output of each sensor in to supplant the use of petrol and diesel vehicles to date,
order to and therefore it is opportune to investigate both the
obtain a more accurate angle reading. This is reasons behind the continual use of environmentally
accomplished through the implementation of a filter, unfriendly transport, and consider potential solutions.
which combines the advantages of each sensor and This paper presents the results from a year-long study
eliminates the drawbacks of each sensor. into electric bicycle effectiveness for a large tropical
campus, identifying barriers to bicycle use that can be
4.5. ACTUATOR UNIT overcome through the availability of public use electric
bicycles.
As the bicycle tilts, we need to apply a restoring
force to return the robot to vertical position. A reaction
wheel pendulum model is followed for the balancing 6. REFERENCES
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