Motion Control of a Pendulum via Periodic Input.

Periodic input sometimes controls mechanical systems dynamically. We have investigated a pendulum system from a view point of such a dynamic control. In this paper, we present the motion control that stabilizes the pendulum to a desired limit cycle by a periodic input. In our method, the periodic input is added so that the energy of the pendulum may become the energy of the desired limit cycle, and is consisted of a periodic solution of van der Pol's equation which is inputted the angle of the pendulum. Experimental results support the effectiveness of the proposed method.