Output feedback stabilization of an Inertia Wheel Pendulum using Sliding Mode Control

This paper investigates the application of a novel robust output feedback stabilizing controller to an Inertia Wheel Pendulum (IWP) - a bench mark problem in the control of under-actuated mechanical systems. The proposed scheme uses a Sliding Mode Control (SMC) design for the stabilization of an IWP having unstable zero dynamics. Starting with the system equations of motion in standard form, a normal form representation of the system is derived, and a sliding mode controller is synthesized for robust stabilization of the system. The state feedback control design is extended to an output feedback control using a high gain observer. It is shown that the system response under the output feedback controller converges to that of the state feedback controller and the estimated states converge to actual states arbitrarily fast.