Development and control of an inverted pendulum driven by a reaction wheel

This paper discusses the development and control of an inverted pendulum system using the reaction wheel mechanism. A laboratory-sized system is developed and services as a physical platform for control test purpose. A hybrid switching controller is designed to swing-up and then stabilize the pendulum at its upright position. Based on the energy analysis, the swing-up controller is developed as a simple modest bang-bang controller which switches the control signal's direction according to the measured pendulum's angle and angular velocity as well. The local stabilizing controller is designed as an observer-based feedback controller. The operating regions and the switching condition between these two controllers are also investigated. The developed controller is implemented in a DSP of type eZdsp F2812 which is plugged in a developed PCB. The simulation and real tests showed consistent and satisfactory performance of this controlled system which is self-developed and successfully controlled with a small financial budget.