Orbital stabilization of a pre-planned periodic motion to swing up the Furuta pendulum: Theory and experiments

The problem of swinging up inverted pendulums has often been solved by stabilization of a particular class of homoclinic structures present in the dynamics of the standard pendulum. In this article new arguments are suggested to show how different homoclinic curves can be preplanned for dynamics of the passive-link of the robot. This is done by reparameterizing the motion according to geometrical relations among the generalized coordinates. It is also shown that under certain conditions there exist periodic solutions surrounding such homoclinic orbits. These trajectories admit designing feedback controllers to ensure exponential orbital stabilization. The method is illustrated by simulations and supported by experimental studies.