Hybrid control for global stabilization of the cart-pendulum system (Q5949058)

The cart-pendulum system is a mechanical system that has been studied to understand control theory and to demonstrate the validity and usefulness of design techniques and algorithms. Cart-pendulum systems in many cases have quite similar dynamics like underactuated robot systems. Though the dynamics of the cart-pendulum system appears quite simple, many standard techniques of nonlinear control are ineffective. Here, the authors suggest a global stabilization controller of the vertical position of the cart-pendulum system. The design procedure consists of three parts. First one has to find a neighborhood of the origin in which a locally stabilizing controller can be used. Second, one has to construct a linear controller for the cart-pendulum system which steers the position and velocity of a system to the orgin. And, in a third part, one has to design several classes of bang-bang controllers and a switching strategy which guarantee that the trajectory of the system, starting from any initial position, enters the neighborhood of the origin where the locally stabilizing controller can be used in finite switching time. The local domain of attraction for the linearized closed-loop system was obtained by means of a direct Lyapunov method.