Experimental Design and Performance Analysis of a Self-Balancing Robot Using PID Control

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-764-4_15How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Dynamic stabilization; ESP32; Inverted pendulum; Kalman filter; microcontroller; PID control; Self-balancing robot

Abstract

Self-balancing robots are a significant group of autonomous systems that capture the classical inverted pendulum problem, and as such, they are both a control design benchmark and a real-world mobile robot platform. This work describes the development and construction of an affordable two-wheeled self-balancing robot based on an ESP32 microcontroller, MPU6050 inertial measurement unit (IMU), and Proportional–Integral–Derivative (PID) controller. The main goal is to provide real-time stability using continuous feedback control under the condition of making hardware affordable and reproducible for educational and research purposes. The tilt angle of the robot is estimated from sensor fusion of accelerometer and gyroscope measurements by a complementary filter, which allows for stable orientation estimation in noise and drift. Experimental tests show that the PID controller with the adjusted gains (Kp = 25, K_i = 0.8, K_d = 10) stabilizes within 1.5 – 2 seconds after initiation and recovers from small and moderate perturbations within 300 – 700 ms. The findings support the efficacy of PID control for low-cost dynamic stabilization as it provides a good balance between simplicity, computational cost, and robustness. This work provides a reproducible scheme that can be applied to other advanced control methods like Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR), fuzzy logic, or reinforcement learning, opening doors to future uses in education, service robotics, and assistive mobility.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Bhargav Prajwal Pathri
AU  - Krishna Vamshi Ganduri
AU  - Sravan Sripadi
AU  - Sanka Sai Darahas
AU  - Boggula Lohith
AU  - Boggula Lokesh
AU  - Sheik Shoaib Akhtar
AU  - Pabbisetty Manideep
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/04
TI  - Experimental Design and Performance Analysis of a Self-Balancing Robot Using PID Control
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Mechanics, Materials and Mechatronics (ICM³ 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 175
EP  - 186
SN  - 2589-4943
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-764-4_15
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-764-4_15
ID  - Pathri2026
ER  -