Design and Implementation of Model Predictive Control for a Gyroscopic Inverted Pendulum

This study proposes the design of an active stabilizing system (ASAS) for a single-track vehicle. Using the gyroscopic effects of two flywheels, this system can generate control torque to stabilize the vehicle in cases where there is centrifugal force of turning. To control the flywheel gimbals to generate stabilizing torque, a model predictive controller (MPC) is applied to control the system. For the controller design and performance evaluations, a model of a gyroscopic inverted pendulum is developed. Control strategies are proposed to stabilize the vehicle in the cases of straight running, circular motion, and path following. The results of the proposed stratgies when controlling the gyroscopic inverted pendulum showed good performance even with physical limitations of the control torques. In order to evaluate the real-time performance and the feasibility of the MPC, a real-time simulator is employed, which includes two embedded STM32F407 boards. The dynamic system and the control algorithms are respectively embedded into two STM32F407 boards for real-time simulation. Implementations of the MPC in this study demonstrate that the proposed controllers are feasible for real-time applications.