Inverted pendulum
Overview
Inverted pendulum is a pendulim with a center of mass above the pivot point. You can simply imagine it by trying to balance a rod by moving the bottom end. In our case the rod will be stabilized by a platform which will move along the rail.
Motivation
The problem of inverted pendulum is well studied yet it is very ubiquitous, humans have to solve this problem every moment as they walk. In rockets this problem also exists as the thrust is applied below the center of mass. My personal intereset in the problem appeared when I decided to build my own router for CNC with terminal switches and homing functionality, so in order to play with the hardware I built a moving platform which is aware of it’s position. An then ideas started to build up, I decided to make my life more interesting and planned to add a gyro and a freely rotating rod on the top of the platform.