Edinburgh Napier University

  This paper considers the stabilization problem of inertia-wheel pendulum (IWP), a widely studied nonlinear mechanical system. The IWP is a classical example of flat under-actuated mechanical systems, for which the design of control laws becomes a challenging task owing to its underactuated nature posing problems in exact feedback linearization. A novel nonlinear controller design for the IWP is presented in this paper fusing recently introduced dynamic surface control with control Lyapunov function method. The proposed design procedure is shown to be simpler and more intuitive than existing designs. Stability of the controller and advantages over conventional energy shaping and backstepping controllers are analyzed theoretically and verified using numerical simulations.