Design and Analysis of an Inverted Pendulum Driven by a Reaction Wheel

The control of underactuated systems is a challenging problem specifically when the mechatronic systems’ control design and implementation are involved. This paper presents a design for a reaction wheel inverted pendulum setup in which variable configurations of the pendulum are achieved by adjusting the position of the overall center of mass of the pendulum. The paper discusses the mechatronics system design and presents methods to identify the dynamic system parameters experimentally. The control system is then analyzed for stability condition at various configurations of center of mass, and a stabilizing control is demonstrated by experimentally implementing of a modern LQR-based state feedback controller.