Furuta Pendulum

Abstract

This report is about the realization of a Furuta pendulum, or rotational inverted pendulum. This type of pendulum consists of a driven shaft which rotates in the horizontal plane and a pendulum attached to that shaft which is free to rotate in the vertical plane. It is one of the classical systems used in the field of control engineering. The main objective of the control algorithm used in Furuta pendulum is to maintain the pendulum in its upright position by the movement of the shaft (and the pendulum itself). This thesis is organized as follows: a design of the pendulum with SolidWorks, a research of the components needed for the tangible structure, a simulation of the pendulum done with MATLAB and the construction of the real pendulum and its controller programmed in Arduino. This control algorithm is divided in the swing up phase, which is responsible for erecting the pendulum from the down position to the equilibrium zone (near upright position), and the stabilization, which is in charge of stopping and maintaining the pendulum in the upright position. We succeeded in the design and simulation but not in the real time implementation of the controller due to possible errors in identification of system parameters, unexpected behaviour of the motor driver and the adjustment tuning of the design parameter of the controller. All of that, could be solved if the time period for the thesis was not limited.