A nonlinear hybrid controller for swinging-up and stabilizing the Furuta pendulum

The conventional switching strategy for solving the inverted pendulum control problem is based on two steps: swinging-up and stabilization. In this note, first, a new strategy for swinging the Furuta pendulum up towards the desired upright position is designed using the Speed-Gradient method, which uses only directly measured coordinates. Then, a nonlinear controller, based on the Forwarding approach, stabilizes the upright position. As a new contribution the latter leads to a nonlinear stabilizer around the upright position, whose Lyapunov function yields a larger size estimation of the domain of attraction than the one obtained with the traditional linear approach. This estimation allows us to use it in a global switching strategy in the practical implementation and guarantees almost-global asymptotic stability of the equilibrium. Successful experimental results are reported with the available laboratory Furuta pendulum.