Nonlinear backstepping control design of the furuta pendulum

The paper develops a nonlinear backstepping design scheme for the balancing control of the Furuta pendulum which is an underactuated rotational inverted pendulum system. The control objective is not only to swing up the pendulum from downward position to upright, but also to drive the actuating arm to return to its starting point. The linearized Furuta pendulum system is investigated in advance in order to analyze and realize the system properties. And then, the design concept of the linearized system is extended to the control design of the original Furuta pendulum with nonlinear backstepping algorithm. As a result, our nonlinear backstepping controller indeed possesses the potentials to achieve the desired control goals. Furthermore, some simulation results are given to illustrate the excellent performance of the resulting closed-loop pendulum system