Real Time Control of Inverted Pendulum using FPGA

The Inverted Pendulum is one of the most important classical problems of Control Engineering. In this paper, a real-time control for stabilization of inverted pendulum is developed using PID controller. The implementation platform chosen here is FPGA because it exhibits some superior qualities over traditional processors such as parallel processing capability, high sampling rates, flexibility in design, and reliability. In this system controller commands the motor through PWM signal, which drives the cart to balance the pendulum in an inverted position. Pendulum's angular position is fed back by an incremental encoder mounted on its base, which is read by controller. Controller then calculates error and runs the PID algorithm to generate a new command signal. Keywords— FPGA, Inverted Pendulum, PID, PWM, VHDL.