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In this video I'll demonstrate an example of gyroscopic stabilization of a two-wheeled vehicle by building a model of the 1903 "Gyro-Monorail", which was an experimental monorail train car that used control moment gyros (CMGs) to keep it upright on two wheels. This scheme could also be used for stabilizing a bike or motorcycle, though.
The end result is the same as using a reaction wheel, but rather than applying correction torque to a big wheel with a lot of inertia at near-zero RPM, the CMG uses a pair of fast spinning gyros that are tilted back and forth to correct the orientation of the vehicle from gyroscopic torque. The torque produced is a product of the angular momentum of the wheel(s) and the rate of tilt of their rotation axes.
In theory this would work just fine with a single wheel, but if the vehicle experiences a change in pitch, that would cause an unwanted tilting effect (same thing as "P-factor" in airplanes). By having a pair of counter-rotating gyroscope wheels spinning at the same rate, any unwanted torque effects are canceled out. In order to produce a net torque, the wheels are tilted opposite to one another, using a pair of RC servos for each wheel. The wheels are 3" x 0.5" solid steel discs that can spin up to 8,000 RPM, but due to excessive vibration, I'm running them at a much lower speed than that. Steel discs probably weren't neccesary for this particular project, and I could have just used 3d printed discs spinning at a higher RPM.
An MPU6050 gyro/accelerometer drives the servos via. an Arduino board with a little bit of code on it in order to tilt the CMGs to provide stabilizing torque on the vehicle. This could also be done with an analog circuit, or even purely mechanically, but that's a project that deserves its own video.
A tiny gear motor drives one wheel of the train to make it crawl along the track. It moves relatively slowly, but the point of the project is to demonstrate the tilt stabilization, and not neccesarily to move the vehicle super fast.
The motors run off a 2-cell lithium battery (approx. 8.0V), while the RC servos, Arduino, and sensor board run off of 5V supplied by an LM2596 buck converter.
Even though it's a relatively simple project, the idea of seeing an unstable two-wheeled vehicle keep itself upright seems almost magical, and I'm considering scaling this up to a full-sized adult bicycle.
Music Used:
Kevin MacLeod - Lobby Time
