Control Systems Design Laboratory

For my senior design course ESE 4480: Control Systems Design Laboratory, my partner and I set out to control and balance a two-link inverted pendulum system. In order to accomplish this, our goal was to swing the pendulum up from rest and then stabilize it in its vertical position, even as the base rotated beneath it.

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To get there, we followed a structured process: first modeling the system’s motion (kinematics and dynamics), then identifying its physical parameters from experimental data, and finally designing a hybrid controller. The controller operated in different modes — swinging the pendulum upward, holding it in balance, and waiting for it when it fell — allowing the system to recover and try again automatically.

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By the end, we achieved not only stable balance but also the ability to rotate the base while keeping the pendulum upright, showing the robustness of our design. For this project, we utilized MATLAB and Simulink extensively to model the system, run simulations, and test control strategies before applying them to the real hardware.

 

The video below walks through the project in more detail, from the theory behind the system to the final demonstration.