Robust State Transfer Control of Double Pendulum

Abstract Inverted pendulums are typical examples of unstable systems and have been used for the verification of designed control systems and/or control education in laboratories. In particular, the control of a double inverted pendulum has been known as a good example to show the power of the state space approach. Instead of these stabilizations of a pendulum at the upright state, the authors have studied the swing-up control of single pendulum from the stable hanging state to the upright position, which is a control to transfer the state of the system from one equilibrium state to the others. The control problem is a non-linear control problem and it can be a good example to show a power of non-linear control method. In this paper control methods of state transfers of a double pendulum are proposed, and the experimental results show that the proposed method is effective for the control problem. We believe that the research will contribute to develop mechanical systems with few actuators.