Second Generation Self Balancing Vehicle

Second generation improved self balancing vehicle

May 31, 2011

Problems and Solutions


One problem I find with the Segway is that when running at relatively high speed (compared with a pedestrian), in flat or not banked curves there are lateral forces acting on the driver, which try to take him away from the vehicle.

This causes that the driver must lean laterally enough to avoid falling, and this state is uncomfortable and even dangerous, because the platform keeps horizontal when the terrain is flat.

Even at low speeds, if the terrain is sloping to one side, the platform where the driver stands gets inclined and is uncomfortable and/or unsafe.





The solution I envisioned to solve this problem is a tilting platform, and wheels that also tilt!

But the most important idea is not that the device can tilt sideways, but to add another full inertial system that allows controlling the tilt towards the sides, preventing the vehicle and its driver from falling.

The Segway can not fall to the side (under normal conditions) because it is mechanically rigid in that direction and its center of gravity is over its base of support, but the Tilto does can fall to the sides (it's tilt-able), hence I added a second control system to control this effect.

The result of this second control system is that if the vehicle is moving in a straight line and the driver leans to the right, for example, it produces the left wheel to accelerate and the right wheel to decelerate proportionally (in order to maintainTilto's speed constant) and so the wheels and the vehicle's base will move to the right, changing the overall Tilto's trajectory in that direction and making it to go back to the vertical state (as we would do on a bike for keeping balance , but the Tilto turns by itself!)

Will it work???

Post #1

Tilt and Go...
Tilt'n go
Tilto !

TILTO is an electric unipersonal vehicle of the "Inverted Pendulum" type, balancing automaticallyin two directions simultaneously. The idea came to me in mid-2010 and it took several months to materialize, partly because at that time I was far from home (in Ethiopia) and partly because I decided to write a Patent Application (just in case ...) and it took me a few months.




How did I get the idea of TILTO?
Going VERY early: In talks with friends of mine, long ago, I had discussed the idea of making a mountainboard with "tilting wheels". The tilting wheels idea was mocked was present in several other ideas, but at some point it occurred to me to apply it to a Segway. The Segway is an object of desire for any technophile, and although it's not the universal solution for the transport of persons (according to its makers), it is useful for short trips (I tried one in Paris) and perhaps even to go from home to the office (15 blocks).