Energy-Based Swing-Up Control for a Remotely Driven Acrobot: Theoretical and Experimental Results

This brief concerns the energy-based swing-up control for a remotely driven acrobot (RDA) which is a 2-link planar robot with the first link being underactuated and the second link being remotely driven by an actuator mounted at a fixed base through a belt. An energy-based swing-up controller is designed via the Lyapunov stability theory. A global motion analysis of the RDA under the designed controller is provided focusing on the behavior of the closed-loop solution and the stability of the closed-loop equilibrium points. The conditions on control parameters for achieving a successful swing-up control are given. Furthermore, an experimental setup is described and experimental results are given to validate the presented theoretical results. The energy-based swing-up controller for the RDA is shown to be effective both theoretically and practically.