Almost global stabilization of the inverted pendulum via continuous state feedback

Continuous state feedback laws are presented for almost global stabilization of the planar inverted pendulum on a cart. The synthesis is carried out exploiting energy-shaping techniques and a suitable smooth switching between positive and negative feedback. Some of the employed ideas could be possibly generalized to the problem of stabilization of systems with multiple equilibrium points. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.