Design and implementation of a balancing controller for two-wheeled vehicles using a cost-effective MCU

In this paper, we present our first trial of developing a tiny-sized and low-cost self-balancing two-wheel vehicle where we mainly focus on design of the sensing and control board and the balancing controller. With the considerations of cost-efficiency, we integrate the sensory systems and the balancing control systems by utilizing an embedded system based on the SUNPLUSTM SPCE061A EMU board and a CPLD, Altera EPM7128SLC84. There are three goals for our design. First, since the system is unstable in nature, it can be used as a teaching aid in the control-related courses to demonstrate the de-sign of various control schemes. Second, motion with the self-balancing capability is novel and interesting and has potential to be a toy. In addition, this trial can provide a prototype to verify the techniques and allow the possibility for further development of a commercial two-wheel vehicle in the future.