Inverted Pendulum? Again?

Ever since I started to learn and work with control systems, the inverted pendulum has been around. It is a perfect example of an unstable system that "works" because a smart control engineer developed a control system right? But at the time I was in college I failed to see the applications of this systems. Recently you might have heard about the latest (in my mind) inverted pendulum application, the PUMA. Check it out



Well, I have this Love-Hate relationship with the inverted pendulum since I choose it for my master thesis. I learned, the hard way, there is more to control a system that just the control algorithm, but you have sensors, actuators, noise, non linearities, etc. You can actually check out the video



This was done long time ago, using C on a 486 running DOS (If you just understood what I wrote, you are over 30). Fortunately there are a number of tools available that make the whole control design and simulation much more faster. Check out this team of students as they develop something much better that mine in about four weeks, way faster of what I did