Visual Servo Velocity and Pose Control of a Wheeled Inverted Pendulum through Partial-Feedback Linearization

Vision-based control of wheeled vehicles is a difficult problem due to nonholonomic constraints on velocities. This is further complicated in the control of vehicles with drift terms and dynamics containing fewer actuators than velocity terms. We explore one such system, the wheeled inverted pendulum, embodied by the Segway. We present two methods of eliminating the effects of nonactuated attitude motions and a novel controller based on partial feedback linearization. This novel controller outperforms a controller based on typical linearization about an equilibrium point