A Self-Stabilized Inverted Pendulum Made of Optically Responsive Liquid Crystal Elastomers

The inverted pendulum system has great potential for various engineering applications, and its stabilization is challenging because of its unstable characteristic. The well-known Kapitza’s pendulum adopts the parametrically excited oscillation to stabilize itself, which generally requires a complex controller. In this paper, self-sustained oscillation is utilized to stabilize an inverted pendulum, which is made of a V-shaped, optically responsive liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) bar under steady illumination. Based on the well-established dynamic LCE model, a theoretical model of the LCE inverted pendulum is formulated, and numerical calculations show that it always develops into the unstable static state or the self-stabilized oscillation state. The mechanism of the self-stabilized oscillation originates from the reversal of the gravity moment of the inverted pendulum accompanied with its own movement. The critical condition for triggering self-stabilized oscillation is fully investigated, and the effects of the system parameters on the stability of the inverted pendulum are explored. The self-stabilized inverted pendulum does not need an additional controller and offers new designs of self-stabilized inverted pendulum systems for potential applications in robotics, military industry, aerospace, and other fields.

Stabilization of the Cart–Inverted-Pendulum System Using State-Feedback Pole-Independent MPC Controllers

In this paper, a pole-independent, single-input, multi-output explicit linear MPC controller is proposed to stabilize the fourth-order cart–inverted-pendulum system around the desired equilibrium points. To circumvent an obvious stability problem, a generalized prediction model is proposed that yields an MPC controller with four tuning parameters. The first two parameters, namely the horizon time and the relative cart–pendulum weight factor, are automatically adjusted to ensure a priori prescribed system gain margin and fast pendulum response while the remaining two parameters, namely the pendulum and cart velocity weight factors, are maintained as free tuning parameters. The comparison of the proposed method with some optimal control methods in the absence of disturbance input shows an obvious advantage in the average peak efficiency in favor of the proposed SIMO MPC controller at the price of slightly reduced speed efficiency. Additionally, none of the compared controllers can achieve a system gain margin greater than 1.63, while the proposed one can go beyond that limit at the price of additional degradation in the speed efficiency.

Development of a fuzzy-state feedback regulator for stabilizing a flexible inverted pendulum system

Accurate modeling and efficient control of inverted pendulums have always been a challenge for researchers. So, the current research aims to achieve the following objectives: (I) proposing a comprehensive dynamic model for the inverted pendulums which accounts for the flexibility of the pendulum bar and (II) suggesting an appropriate supervisory fuzzy-pole placement control strategy for stabilizing the pendulum system. Using a Lagrangian formulation, the equations of motion are derived and linearized. Then, a state feedback controller with a reduced-order observer is designed to stabilize the system. Closed-loop simulations reveal that at least six modes shall be considered in the dynamic equations. To improve the quality of the transient response, a novel fuzzy system is developed for real-time assignment of the controller poles. Simulation results demonstrate that the control quality is significantly improved by adding a supervisory fuzzy system to the control loop. The developed approach for dynamic modeling of the system, and the idea of multi-level fuzzy-pole placement control architecture developed in this paper, may be successfully applied to improve the response specifications in other dynamic systems.

Stabilization and tracking control of an x-z type inverted pendulum system using Lightning Search Algorithm tuned nonlinear PID controller

Inverted pendulum systems (IPSs) are mostly used to demonstrate the control rules for keeping the pendulum at a balanced upright position due to a slight force applied to the cart system. This paper presents an application for nonlinear control of an x-z type IPS by using a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller with newly established evolutionary tuning method Lightning Search Algorithm (LSA). A single, double and triple PID controller system is tested with the conventional and the self-tuning controllers to get a better understanding of the performance of the given system. The mathematical modelling of the x-z type IPS, the theoretical explanation of the LSA and the simulation analysis of the x-z type IPS is put forward entirely. The LSA algorithm solves the optimization problem of PID controller in an evolutionary way. The most effective way of making comparisons is evaluating the performance results with a well-known optimization technique or with the previous accepted results. We have compared the system’s performance with particle swarm optimization and with a classical control study in the literature. According to the simulation results, LSA-tuned PID controller has the ability to decrease the overshoot better than the conventional-tuned controllers. Finally, it can be concluded that the LSA-supported PID can better stabilize the pendulum angle and track the reference better for non-disturbed and the slightly disturbed systems.

Disturbance observer-based controller for inverted pendulum with uncertainties: Linear matrix inequality approach

<span lang="EN-US">A new approach based on linear matrix inequality (LMI) technique for stabilizing the inverted pendulum is developed in this article. The unknown states are estimated as well as the system is stabilized simultaneously by employing the observer-based controller. In addition, the impacts of the uncertainties are taken into consideration in this paper. Unlike the previous studies, the uncertainties in this study are unnecessary to satisfy the bounded constraints. These uncertainties will be converted into the unknown input disturbances, and then a disturbance observer-based controller will be synthesized to estimate the information of the unknown states, eliminate completely the effects of the uncertainties, and stabilize inverted pendulum system. With the support of lyapunov methodology, the conditions for constructing the observer and controller under the framework of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) are derived in main theorems. Finally, the simulations for system with and without uncertainties are exhibited to show the merit and effectiveness of the proposed methods.</span>

Arm Angle Tracking Control with Pole Balancing Using Equivalent Input Disturbance Rejection for a Rotational Inverted Pendulum

This paper proposes a robust tracking control method for swing-up and stabilization of a rotational inverted pendulum system by applying equivalent input disturbance (EID) rejection. The mathematical model of the system was developed by using a Lagrangian equation. Then, the EID, including external disturbances and parameter uncertainties, was defined; and the EID observer was designed to estimate EID using the state observer dynamics and a low-pass filter. For robustness, the linear-quadratic regulator method is used with EID rejection. The closed-loop stability is proven herein using the Lyapunov theory and input-to-state stability. The performance of the proposed method is validated and verified via experimental results.

Linear Quadratic Gaussian Regulator for the Nonlinear Observer-Based Control of a Dynamic Base Inverted Pendulum

The inverted pendulum is a non-linear control problem permanently tending towards instability. The main aim of this study is to design a controller capable enough to work within the given conditions while also keeping the pendulum erect given the impulsive movement of the cart to which it is joint via a hinge. The first half of the paper presents the mathematical modelling of the dynamic system, together with the design of a linear quadratic regulator (LQR). This paper also discusses a novel adaptive control mechanism employing a Kalman filter for the mobile inverted pendulum system (MIPS). In the second half of the paper, a Gaussian Quadratic Linear Controller (LQG) is adapted to improve on previous deficiencies. The simulation is done through Simulink and results show that both controllers are capable of managing the multiple output model. However, data from simulations clearly showed that an LQG controller is a better choice.