In this paper, we study five aspects of design for wheeled inverted pendulum (WIP) platforms with the aim of understanding the effect of design choices on the balancing performance. First, we demonstrate analytically and experimentally the effect of soft visco-elastic tires on a WIP showing that the use of soft tires enhances balancing performance. Next, we study the effect of pitch rate and wheel velocity filters on WIP performance and make suggestions for design of filters. We then describe a self-tuning limit cycle compensation algorithm and experimentally verify its operation. Subsequently, we present an analytical simulation to study the effects of torque and velocity control of WIP motors and describe the tradeoffs between the control methodologies in various application scenarios. Finally, to understand if motor gearing can be an efficient alternative to bigger and more expensive direct drive motors, we analyze the effect of motor gearing on WIP dynamics. Our aim is to describe electromechanical design trade offs appropriately, so a WIP can be designed and constructed with minimal iterative experimentation.
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