2017 17th International Conference on Control, Automation and Systems (ICCAS 2017)

Oct. 18-21, 2017, Ramada Plaza, Jeju, Korea

Design of an Energy-based Controller for a 2D Ball Segway

Do Van Thach1, Pham Dinh Ba2, Soon-Geul Lee3*
1,2,3
‫ٻ‬Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kyung Hee University,Yongin, Gyeonggi, South Korea
(thachdovan@khu.ac.kr, phamdinhba007@gmail.com, sglee@khu.ac.kr, * Corresponding author)

Abstract: A ball segway is a ballbot-type robot that has a car-like structure. It can move with three
omnidirectional-wheel mechanisms to drive the ball while maintaining balance. To obtain stable balancing and
transferring simultaneously of the 2D ball segway which is an underactuated system, a control law is designed
based on energy method. The energy storage function is formulated to prove the passivity property of the system.
Simulation results show the effectiveness of our approach.

Keywords: Ball segway, ballbot, energy-based, Lyapunov, passivity control.

1. INTRODUCTION position control for the y-z plane.

The structure of a ball segway is similar to a ball robot, The rest of paper is organized as follows. In Section 2,
but it is different from a ball robot such that a human the dynamic model of the system is presented. The
can ride due to not only its sufficient dimension but also proposed controller is presented in Section 3. Section 4
its control capability. Under control of a human, the and Section 5 respectively present the result of
robot can move in any direction while it keeps dynamic
stability [1]. In additional, the ball robot has features of numerical simulations and conclusions.
an underactuated system, where the number of control
inputs is fewer than the configuration variables, thus 2. SYSTEM MODELLING
raising complicated issues in control. Hence, control of Figure 1 is the design drawing of the ball segway. Its
an underactuated system has attracted many scholars to mechanical system is composed of a driving unit with a
tackle that problem.
The ball robot is a new type of mobile robot firstly ball, a body frame including a seat, and a cover. The
introduced by Hollis [2]. Both dynamic modeling and dynamic system has three parts: a body, motors with
controller design for the ball robot have been omnidirectional wheels and a ball. The ball mass mk and
continuously developed by many researchers [3]–[9]. A the mass of the omnidirectional wheel mw are considered
typical PD feedback controller is used in [3] to achieve as point masses concentrated at their centers, ma denotes
stabilization and position control. Tsai [8] and Lauwers equivalent mass of all remaining parts which are fixed
[10] used a double-loop controller, one is a to the body frame including the frame itself, the cover,
proportional-integral (PI) loop acts as a velocity three driving motors with reduction gear boxes. Table 1
controller, the other is linear quadratic regulator (LQR)
loop to stabilize and position control for the robot
system. A sliding mode controller based on
backstepping approach is employed [4] to keep the
balancing and path tracking. Based on LMI approach, a
robust LQR controller is designed using the polytopic
model to solve the balancing problem of an NXT
ballbot [11]. Several controllers are developed based on
intelligent control investigated in [12]–[14].
In this research, the dynamics of the composed
motion of the three omni-driving modules and the ball is
decoupled into two orthogonal 2D motions are the x-z
and y-z planes. Based on the nonlinear model a novel
energy-based controller is designed to maintain the Fig. 1. Design drawing of a ball segway.
self-balancing and station keeping as well as the

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shows the specification of the developed driving Ik 3I cos 2 α 3I cos 2 α
m11 = mk + + ma + w 2 , m12 = w 2 rk − mal cosθ x ,
mechanism of the ball segway with the body frame that rk2
2rw 2rw
a human can ride. 3I w cos 2 α 3I r 2 cos 2 α
m21 = 2
rk − mal cosθ x , m22 = mal 2 + w k 2 + Ix ,
Chosen generalized coordinates of the system include 2rw 2rw
xk(t), yk(t), θx(t) and θy(t), namely, ball displacement where mk , I k refer to the mass and moment of inertia of
along x-axis and y-axis, body tilt angle in the x-z plane the ball. I w is the moment of inertia of each
and y-z plane, respectively. ux and uy are x and y
omnidirectional wheel. ma , I x and l are body mass, body
components of the resultant torque of three driving
motors acting on the ball. To obtain a dynamic model of moment of inertia about the x-axis and the distance from
the system, the following assumptions are made: (i) the mass center of the body to the center of the ball,
Omnidirectional wheels, body and ball are rigid objects. respectively.
(ii) The ground is flat and horizontal. (iii) There is no ª0 malθx sin θ x º ªb y 0º
C(q x , q x ) = « » , Dx = « ,
slip between the ball and the ground, and between the ¬ 0 0 ¼ ¬0 brx »¼

ball and omnidirectional wheels. (iv) The contacts ª1 º

« r ux »
between the ball and the ground, and between the ª 0 º « w »
G (q x ) = « » x « r » = Ju x ,
, IJ =
omnidirectional wheels and the ball are assumed to be −
¬ a m gl sin θ x¼
« ux »
k

contact point.
Base on the above assumptions, the dynamics
equations of the ball segway for the y-z plane is
obtained with Euler–Lagrange equation and decoupling
method.
 x + C(q x , q x )q x + D xq x + G (q x ) = IJ x ,
M (q x )q
¬ rw ¼
where g is the gravity acceleration, by and brx are the
viscous damping coefficients of ball-ground and
ball-body friction, respectively in the y-z plane.
(1) 3. ENERGY-BASED CONTROLLER DESIGN

where, q x = [ yk șx ] , M (q x ) is a symmetric mass matrix,

T
3.1 Control objective
C(q x , q x ) is a Coriolis-centrifugal matrix, D ( q x ) is a Assuming that all the state variables are measurable.
damping matrix, G (q x ) indicates a gravity Let q xr = [ ykr , 0]T denote as a reference vector, where

vector, IJ x denotes a control torque vector of the driving ykr is the desired position of the ball in the y-axis. For

omnidirectional wheel motors. Each of them is given an error vector q x = q x − q xr , the control objective is to
by: design an energy-based controller that stabilizes the
ªm m12 º error state vector q x . In other words, the control
M (q x ) = « 11 »,
¬ m21 m22 ¼ objective is to bring the body of the system to its upright
Table 1. Specification of the ball segway
posture and transfer the ball segway to the desired
Parameter Symbol Value position simultaneously.
Mass of body ma (kg) 116 3.2 Passivity of the ball segway
Body center of mass height l ( m) 0.23 The equation of motion is transformed into
 + C(q , q )q + D q + K q = IJ ,
M ( q x )q (2)
Roll moment of inertia I x (kg .m 2 ) 16.25 x x x x x x p x x

Pitch moment of inertia I y (kg .m 2 ) 15.85 where K p ∈ ℜ 2 x 2 is a symmetric positive definite matrix,

Yaw moment of inertia I z (kg .m 2 ) 9.32 (  + ( C(q , q ) + D ) q + G (q )

IJ x = - M ( q x )q xr x x x xr x )
+ IJ x + K p q x .
Radius of omni wheel rw (m) 0.1
Inertia of omni wheel 2 0.26 A storage function of the system (2) is defined as
I w (kg .m )
1 1
Mass of ball mk (kg ) 11.4 S = q Tx M (q)q x + q Tx K p q x , (3)
2 2
Radius of ball rk (m) 0.19 where the function S is a positive definite, its time
Inertia of ball I k (kg .m )2 0.165 derivative as
 + 1 q T M
S = q Tx M ( q x ) q  ( q ) q + q T K q .
Zenith angle α (deg.) 56 x
2
x x x x p x

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 {
S = q Tx IJ x - D ( q x ) q x − K pq x } 4. SIMULATION RESULTS
The efficiency of the proposed control strategy was
1
+ q Tx ( M  ( q ) − 2C(q , q ) ) q + q T K q
x x x x x p x (4) validated with computer simulation. The simulation was
2
= −q x D xq x + q x IJ x ≤ q x IJ x .
T T T implemented in Matlab program with parameters were
shown in Table 1.
Integrating both sides of the Eq. (4) yields
T T
 ≤ q T IJ dt .
S (T ) − S (0) = ³ Sdt
0
³ x x 0
(5) 4.1 Self-balancing and station keeping
This simulation shows performance of the proposed
The Eq. (5) shows that the system (1) is dissipative
controller when the ball segway with an initial lean
with the supply rate q Tx IJ x . Therefore, the system (1) is
angle θ x ( 0 ) = 6° tries to stabilize itself while keeping
always passive with q x as the output and IJ x as input. We
note that the system has an unstable equilibrium the ball segway at the current position, yk = 0 m .
point ( q x , q x ) = ( 0,0 ) .
The proposed controller is designed to stabilize the
system around its unstable equilibrium point.

3.3 Passivity-based PD controller

Let D ⊂ ℜ2 be a domain containing the equilibrium
point of the system q x = 0 . Let V : D → ℜ be a
Lyapunov function. The storage energy function S in
(3) is used as a Lyapunov function candidate V for the
closed-loop system. Fig. 2. The response of the lean angle θ x .
Remark 1: V is a radially unbounded positive
definite function and its time derivative is described as
V = S ≤ q Tx IJ x . (6)
To achieve control objective for the system (2), the
control input is proposed as follows
IJ x = −K d q x , (7)
where K d ∈ ℜ 2 x 2 is a symmetric positive definite matrix.
Substituting (7) into (6) yields
V ≤ −q Tx K d q x ≤ 0.
Fig. 3. The response of the position.
Remark 2: V is negative definite then equilibrium
point ( q x , q x ) = ( 0,0 ) is globally asymptotically stable and 4.2 Position control
The control objective is to maintain two issues in
the system can be globally stabilized by the control
which the ball segway position is moved to track a ramp
input (7).
input ykr = 0.3t while keeping the self-balancing under
The control input vector for the system (1) is
obtained as two cases in 20 s. In the first case, the initial lean angle
is θ x = 0o , and θ x = 6o in the second case. Both of position
(  + ( C(q , q ) + D ) q + G (q )
IJ x = M (q x )q xr x x x xr x )
tracking and the balancing problems are shown a good
−K pq x − K d q x .
result. The lean angle is converged to zero, the position
Remark 3: The control input IJ x includes linear terms of the ball segway is to reach to the target path.
of a classical PD controller and the nonlinear terms, The figures 4 and 5 show the response of the lean
which are gravity compensation term and the function angle and the ball’s position of the first case, the rest
of reference terms. The ultimate control input for the one are responses of the second case.
system is computed by using pseudo inverse technique
as follows:
u x = ( JT J ) JT IJ x .
−1

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Fig. 4. The response of the lean angle θ x .
Fig. 5. The response of the position.
Fig. 6. The response of the lean angle θ x .
Fig. 7. The response of the position.
5. CONCLUSIONS
The total energy of the system is derived to show the
passivity property of the ball segway, and then a
suitable control law is chosen to bring the system state
to the desired values. The simulation results showed
effectiveness of the proposed controller in the case of
both keeping self-balance and transferring.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This study was partly supported by the
Senior-friendly Product Research and Development
Program (HI15C1027) of the Ministry of Health and
Welfare/Korea Health Industry Development Institute,
the Technology Innovation Program of the Ministry of
Knowledge Economy (MKE)/Korea Evaluation Institute
of Industrial Technology (KEIT) (Grant No. 10067781
and 10040992).
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