Design and Control of a Novel Unmanned Ground Vehicle

This paper presents a novel design of a full six-degree-of-freedom, tri-rotor-actuated single-wheeled vehicle. When stationary on the ground, the model of the vehicle mimics an inverted pendulum system, a typical representative of highly nonlinear systems with non-minimum phase and unstable characteristics. The full nonlinear model of the vehicle is derived using Newton-Euler approach, but the objective herein is to balance the single-wheeled vehicle in its unstable upright position as this is a precursor to rolling motion. Robust feedback and Jacobi linearization techniques are invoked on the nonlinear dynamics of the vehicle in the relevant axis for subsequent controller synthesis. The synthesized controllers are verified and compared by means of numerical simulations, where it is shown that the design objective of stabilizing the vehicle in its unstable equilibrium (upright) position is robustly achieved.