An inertia wheel pendulum is a
pendulum
A pendulum is a weight suspended from a wikt:pivot, pivot so that it can swing freely. When a pendulum is displaced sideways from its resting, Mechanical equilibrium, equilibrium position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that ...
with an
inertia wheel
A reaction wheel (RW) is used primarily by spacecraft for three-axis attitude control, and does not require rockets or external applicators of torque. They provide a high pointing accuracy, and are particularly useful when the spacecraft must ...
attached. It can be used as a pedagogical problem in
control theory
Control theory is a field of mathematics that deals with the control of dynamical systems in engineered processes and machines. The objective is to develop a model or algorithm governing the application of system inputs to drive the system to a ...
. This type of pendulum is often confused with the gyroscopic effect, which has completely different physical nature.
See also
*
Inverted pendulum
An inverted pendulum is a pendulum that has its center of mass above its pivot point. It is unstable and without additional help will fall over. It can be suspended stably in this inverted position by using a control system to monitor the a ...
*
Robotic unicycle
*
Spinning top
A spinning top, or simply a top, is a toy with a squat body and a sharp point at the bottom, designed to be spun on its vertical axis, balancing on the tip due to the gyroscopic effect.
Once set in motion, a top will usually wobble for a f ...
References
* Mark W. Spong,
Peter Corke
Peter Corke (born 24 August 1959) is an Australian roboticist known for his work on Visual Servoing, field robotics, online education, the online Robot Academy and the Robotics Toolbox and Machine Vision Toolbox for MATLAB (matrix laboratory ...
, Rogelio Lozano.
Nonlinear Control of the Gyroscopic Pendulum''
Pendulums
Control engineering
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