Development of a PID Controlled Arduino-Based Stabiliser

¹ School of Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Taylor’s University, Malaysia
² School of Engineering and Physics Sciences, Mechanical Engineering, Heriot-Watt University, Malaysia

^* Corresponding author: c.hoo@hw.ac.uk

Abstract

Inverted pendulum remained as the most popular topic for control theory researches because of its characteristic of being non-linear, unstable and under-actuated system. It is ideal for verification, validation and enhancement of control theory by stabilizing the inverted pendulum in an upright position using various controller and stabilizer mechanism. For this project, Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller is used to stabilize the inverted pendulum by tuning the respective gains (k_P, k_I, and k_D) to control the parameters of inverted pendulum which includes the rise time, settling time, overshoot and steady-state error in cooperation with of Arduino microcontroller. The objective of this project is to design and build a stabilizer mechanism with the integration of mechanical and electrical components to stabilize two Directional (2D) inverted pendulum similar to 3D printer mechanism. Besides that, PID controller will be tuned in Arduino microcontroller and control the output of stabilizer mechanism. The stabilizer mechanism is designed in SolidWorks software and built using various manufacturing techniques, raw materials and 3D printing, while the electronics components such as gyroscope and Direct Current (DC) motors are controlled using Arduino Due in C++ language. The gyroscope determines the tilting angle of the pendulum as a feedback in the control loop, and the gains of PID are used to control the speed and direction of DC motor to provide sufficient force/torque to keep the inverted pendulum in an upright position. The stabilizer mechanism with inverted pendulum has been built and the gains of PID have been tuned using “trial and error” method as friction is now taken into consideration. The inverted pendulum is successfully stabilized in an upright position (0_o measure at z-axis) using control theory.