Balancing of an inverted pendulum through adjusting angle and thrust of propellers

Sammanfattning: Robotics and autonomous systems are today progressing at a very fast pace and can be seen in our everyday life, both in industry and society. A popular topic among researches in the field of robotics is the inverted pendulum due to its naturally unstable system.  This thesis describes the design of a control system to an inverted pendulum based robot.  The robot balances through the thrust from two propellers able to direct their force through adjusting the angle of the axis they are mounted on, thus meaning the propellers as well. The framework, mechanical and electronic components of the balancing robot were assembled in a manner that yields a naturally unstable system that is prone to tip over. This required an active controller to be designed and implemented in order to get a stable system, answering the question how to design a control system for such a robot. By using an IMU, a sensor combining accelerometer and gyroscope, measurements of the angle of the robot relative to the ground, i.e. tilt angle, is achieved.  A servo motor adjusts the angle of the propellers and two brushless motors create thrust using propellers. After various tests and approaches how to design a control system for this robot it is concluded that controlling both the angle and the thrust of the propellers is preferable and using a predicting factor such as velocity has great advantages.