Furuta’s Pendulum: A Conservative Nonlinear Model for Theory and Practise

Furuta’s pendulum has been an excellent benchmark for the automatic control community in the last years, providing, among others, a better understanding of model-based Nonlinear Control Techniques. Since most of these techniques are based on invariants and/or integrals of motion then, the dynamic model plays an important role. This paper describes, in detail, the successful dynamical model developed for the available laboratory pendulum. The success relies on a basic dynamical model derived from Classical Mechanics which has been augmented to compensate the non-conservative torques. Thus, the quasi-conservative “practical” model developed allows to design all the controllers as if the system was strictly conservative. A survey of all the nonlinear controllers designed and experimentally tested on the available laboratory pendulum is also reported.