Nonlinear Control of Underactuated Systems using a 3-D Virtual Laboratory

Control of underactuated mechanical systems is currently one of the most active fields in research due to the diverse applications of these systems in real-life. The aim of this article is focused on the application of nonlinear control techniques for underactuated systems and the virtual simulation of their dynamics behavior. The main contribution of this research is related with the applications of balancing controllers designed with linearization techniques, and including swing-up control using energy based methods for two of the most typical underactuated systems used for testing nonlinear control: The cart-pole and the rotating pendulum systems. The second contribution relies in the development of a virtual laboratory for testing this algorithms and also with a great feature included; the platform is not tied to specific embedded controllers, the users can proof their own control techniques, adding control equations using a graphical user interface developed for that purpose. Finally, the analytical results will be validated via numerical solutions implemented on Matlab-Simulink toolbox, comparing the controllers and the simulation capabilities through several test cases.