Journey

 

Open-loop vibrational control of an inverted pendulum

Open-loop vibrational control of an inverted pendulum
Submitted by Brian Douglas on 02/01/2022
Explanation 8 resources
Last Edited: 10/27/2023

This journey explains how inverted pendulums can be balanced with an open-loop vibrational controller. 

All of these resources come from the excellent Twitter thread (referenced below) that @ahmedallibhoy posted on Feb. 1, 2022. The phase plane image in the thumbnail was generated by code written by Ahmed as well (also referenced below).

This Twitter thread is really all you need to click on.  Everything below this is just a listing of the resources that are called out throughout the thread.

This is the video that inspired the thread. Check out a vibrational controller in action! 

For more detailed information on the mathematics behind what's happening in the above YouTube video and Twitter thread, check out this paper ...

... and this paper.

If you want to generate the gifs and images in the thread yourself, Ahmed has posted all of the code on GitHub.

These next two books were recommended by Ahmed as great sources for those who are really interested in reading more about this theory.

This video was recommended by Mario Figueiredo in the comments of the thread. It's a well-produced video explaining some research from UCI School of Engineering that shows vibrational control in insect flight.