Furuta Pendulum

In Embedded Operating Systems (ECE5725), I learned about designing microcontroller based systems using embedded Linux. For the final project, I designed and built a self balancing Furuta pendulum, then controlled it using a Raspberry Pi 3. The Furuta pendulum is a variation of the pendulum on a cart, but instead of being attached to a moving cart constrained to move linearly in only one dimension, the Furuta pendulum’s “cart” is a rotary object.

I derived the dynamics of the system using symbolic algebra in MATLAB, and designed a controller around it using sisotool. The pendulum itself was mostly machined out of metal, and the stand was laser cut out of wood and acrylic. Because the components of the design was relatively simple, system identification was done by finding the mass and moment of inertia of the various pieces. The electronic components in the system are the Raspberry Pi, a Wantai stepper motor, a stepper motor driver, and Adafruit 9 DOF IMU (BNO055).

If you would like to read more in detail, feel free to look at this page for more detail on the process, challenges and areas of improvements.