Stabilization of the Robot Mounted Inverted Pendulum by Vision Control

Abstract

In this paper the stabilization of the well known inverted pendulum problem by visual control is presented. The pendulum is mounted on the flange of an articulated robot arm. It is observed by camera and its angle of inclination is computed by image processing on a PC. For stabilization a state space controller realized with the standard robot controller is used. In summary, this system can be seen as an example of a robot with visual control. The inverted pendulum is used because it is an adequate controlled system to demonstrate advanced control algorithms. Its implementation with a robot results in some more restrictions in comparison with the pendulum mounted on a linear drive, e.g. in lower acceleration, smaller traversing range and the relatively high cycle time of the commercial robot controller. Furthermore, the integration of the camera in the closed loop control instead of an angular transmitter makes the successful realization more difficult.