Abstract

In this paper, a passivity-based control combined with backstepping control of a bicycle robot is proposed. A bicycle robot is a system which has a nonlinear property and provides two inputs and two outputs. The control inputs of bicycle robot are the steering torque and the kinetic energy. Its two outputs are the steering angle and the rolling angle. A bicycle robot is a passive system. We research a control problem, which the steering angle and the rolling angle track a value of zero, and the velocity of the steering angle and the velocity of the rolling angle track a value of zero, in order that we stabilze a bicycle robot at its vertical balance. We linearize and decouple the plant into two single input single output systems. The passivity-based control is applied to each single input single output system. Then, the passivity-based control combined with backstepping control is applied to each plant. Simulation results are done with Simulink in MATLAB and have good results. The steering angle of the passivity-based control combined with backstepping control tracks a value of zero with the settling time of 2.8 seconds and the rolling angle tracks a value of zero with the settling time of 2.3 seconds. The stability analysis shows that the equilibrium point at origin of the plant is asymptotically stable in two cases: the passivity-based control and the backstepping control. There are comparisons of a passivity-based control combined with backstepping control, a passivity-based control using passivation method, a passivity-based control combined with sliding mode control, and a passivity-based control using neural network.