Comparative Analysis of Control Design Techniques for a Cart-Inverted-Pendulum in Real-Time Implementation

Conventional controllers such as PID controllers have a long history of successful industrial applications. However, in recent years, many nonlinear controllers have been applied to deal with nonlinear systems. Sliding mode control has been successfully used for SISO non-linear systems and for certain multivariable systems, fuzzy-logic has been successfully applied in many practical control systems. Meanwhile, there has been interest in developing expert systems for control that involve necessary process knowledge required for good control. Neural network control has been used to determine adaptive laws for the adjustment of the control parameters. This paper will evaluate and compare PD, sliding mode, fuzzy, expert system, and neural network control methods in controlling the cart-inverted-pendulum. Performance is evaluated in terms of control surface, system response, stability, and robustness. Moreover the comparison of these controllers is validated through experimentation. Strengths and weaknesses, in the real-time control are indicated.