Abstract In this paper, we discuss the trajectory control for a wheeled inverse pendulum type mobile robot. The robot has two independent driving wheels on the same axle, and a gyro type sensor to measure the inclination angular velocity of the body and rotary encoders to measure wheel rotation. The purpose of this work is to make a robot autonomously navigate in a plane while keeping its own balance. The control algorithm consists of three parts: balance and velocity control, steering control and straight line tracking control. We designed and implemented a vehicle command system for such robot to control using the proposed algorithm. Experiments of the navigation in a real indoor environment have been performed using our experimental robot “Yamabico Kurara”.