The Furuta pendulum, or rotational inverted pendulum, consists of a driven arm which rotates in the horizontal plane and 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 ...
attached to that arm which is free to rotate in the vertical plane. It was invented in 1992 at
Tokyo Institute of Technology
is a national research university located in Greater Tokyo Area, Japan. Tokyo Tech is the largest institution for higher education in Japan dedicated to science and technology, one of first five Designated National University and selected a ...
by Katsuhisa Furuta
[Xu, Y., Iwase, M. and Furuta, K. (2001) “Time optimal swing-up control of single pendulum”, Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control, 123(3), 518-527.][Furuta, K., Iwase, M. (2004) “Swing-up time analysis of pendulum”, Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences: Technical Sciences, 52(3), 153-163.][Iwase, M., Åström, K.J., Furuta, K. and Åkesson, J. (2006) “Analysis of safe manual control by using Furuta pendulum”, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Control Applications, 568-572.] and his colleagues. It is an example of a complex nonlinear oscillator of interest in
control system theory. The pendulum is
underactuated and extremely
non-linear
In mathematics and science, a nonlinear system is a system in which the change of the output is not proportional to the change of the input. Nonlinear problems are of interest to engineers, biologists, physicists, mathematicians, and many other ...
due to the gravitational forces and the coupling arising from the
Coriolis and
centripetal
A centripetal force (from Latin ''centrum'', "center" and ''petere'', "to seek") is a force that makes a body follow a curved path. Its direction is always orthogonal to the motion of the body and towards the fixed point of the instantaneous ce ...
forces. Since then, dozens, possibly hundreds of papers and theses have used the system to demonstrate linear and non-linear control laws.
[Åkesson, J. and Åström, K.J. (2001) “Safe Manual Control of the Furuta Pendulum”, In Proceedings 2001 IEEE International Conference on Control Applications (CCA'01), pp. 890-895.] The system has also been the subject of two texts.
[Fantoni, I. and Lozano, R. (2002) “Non-linear control of underactuated mechanical systems”, Springer-Verlag, London.][Egeland, O. and Gravdahl, T. (2002) “Modeling and Simulation for Automatic Control”, Marine Cybernetics, Trondheim, Norway, 639 pp., .]
Equations of motion
Despite the great deal of attention the system has received, very few publications successfully derive (or use) the full dynamics. Many authors
have only considered the rotational inertia of the pendulum for a single principal axis (or neglected it altogether
). In other words, the inertia tensor only has a single non-zero element (or none), and the remaining two diagonal terms are zero. It is possible to find a pendulum system where the moment of inertia in one of the three principal axes is approximately zero, but not two.
A few authors
have considered slender symmetric pendulums where the moments of inertia for two of the principal axes are equal and the remaining moment of inertia is zero. Of the dozens of publications surveyed for this wiki only a single conference paper and journal paper
[Awtar, S., King, N., Allen, T., Bang, I., Hagan, M., Skidmore, D. and Craig, K. (2002) “Inverted pendulum systems: Rotary and arm-driven – A mechatronic system design case study”, Mechatronics, 12, 357-370. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~awtar/invertedpendulum_mechatronics.pdf ] were found to include all three principal inertial terms of the pendulum. Both papers used a
Lagrangian formulation but each contained minor errors (presumably typographical).
The equations of motion presented here are an extract from
paperref name="Cazzolatoetal2011">Cazzolato, B.S and Prime, Z (2011) "On the Dynamics of the Furuta Pendulum", Journal of Control Science and Engineering,
Volume 2011 (2011), Article ID 528341, 8 pages. http://downloads.hindawi.com/journals/jcse/2011/528341.pdf on the Furuta pendulum dynamics derived at the
University of Adelaide
The University of Adelaide (informally Adelaide University) is a public research university located in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third-oldest university in Australia. The university's main campus is located on ...
.
Definitions
Consider the rotational inverted pendulum mounted to a DC motor as shown in Fig. 1. The DC motor is used to apply a torque
to Arm 1. The link between Arm 1 and Arm 2 is not actuated but free to rotate. The two arms have lengths
and
. The arms have masses
and
which are located at
and
respectively, which are the lengths from the point of rotation of the arm to its center of mass. The arms have inertia tensors
and
(about the centre of mass of the arms respectively). Each rotational joint is viscously damped with damping coefficients
and
, where
is the damping provided by the motor bearings and
is the damping arising from the pin coupling between Arm 1 and Arm 2.
A right hand coordinate system has been used to define the inputs, states and the Cartesian coordinate systems 1 and 2. The coordinate axes of Arm 1 and Arm 2 are the principal axes such that the inertia tensors are diagonal.
The angular rotation of Arm 1,
, is measured in the horizontal plane where a counter-clockwise direction (when viewed from above) is positive. The angular rotation of Arm 2,
, is measured in the vertical plane where a counter-clockwise direction (when viewed from the front) is positive. When the Arm is hanging down in the stable equilibrium position
.
The torque the servo-motor applies to Arm 1,
, is positive in a counter-clockwise direction (when viewed from above). A disturbance torque,
, is experienced by Arm 2, where a counter-clockwise direction (when viewed from the front) is positive.
Assumptions
Before deriving the dynamics of the system a number of assumptions must be made. These are:
*The motor shaft and Arm 1 are assumed to be rigidly coupled and infinitely stiff.
*Arm 2 is assumed to be infinitely stiff.
*The coordinate axes of Arm1 and Arm 2 are the principal axes such that the inertia tensors are diagonal.
*The motor rotor inertia is assumed to be negligible. However, this term may be easily added to the moment of inertia of Arm 1.
*Only viscous damping is considered. All other forms of damping (such as Coulomb) have been neglected, however it is a simple exercise to add this to the final governing DE.
Non-linear Equations of Motion
The non-linear equations of motion are given by
and
Simplifications
Most Furuta pendulums tend to have long slender arms, such that the moment of
inertia along the axis of the arms is negligible. In addition, most arms have
rotational symmetry such that the moments of inertia in two of the principal axes
are equal. Thus, the inertia tensors may be approximated as follows: