STABILIZATION OF A CART AND DOUBLE-PENDULUM SYSTEM

Abstract. This Master’s Plan B report for the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa is the result of Daniel Langdon’s examination of methods of modeling and stabilizing a cart and double-pendulum system against small disturbances. The Euler-Lagrange Equations, a fundamental result of the calculus of variations, combined with the Principle of Least Action and the Lagrange D’Alembert Principle are used to describe the equations of motion for a cart and double-pendulum system in terms of the kinetic and potential energy of the system, which is in turn described in terms of the positions and velocities of the cart and two pendulum bobs. Theorems from differential equations are combined with a linear approximation of the equations of motion and the notion of feedback to compute an algorithm for stabilization, whose action of stabilization against a sample small disturbance is demonstrated. 1