This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been

fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2930220, IEEE Access

Date of publication xxxx 00, 0000, date of current version April 04, 2019.
Digital Object Identifier xx.xxxx/ACCESS.2019.DOI

Control of Rotary Inverted Pendulum

Using Model-free Backstepping
Technique
JINGWEN HUANG1 , TINGTING ZHANG1 , YOU FAN1 and JIAN-QIAO SUN2
1
Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, 100029, China (e-mail: huangjw@mail.buct.edu.cn)
2
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Merced, CA 95343, USA
Corresponding author: Jian-Qiao Sun (e-mail: jqsun@ucmerced.edu).
“This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China through the Grants (11702016, 11572215, 11332008 and
11172197).”

ABSTRACT This paper presents control studies of a rotary inverted pendulum (RIP) by applying a model-
free backstepping (MFBS) control technique. We first discuss the new MFBS technique, which does not
rely on the detailed model of the system, and makes use of only the system structure and measurements of
the state. The MFBS technique makes use of a normal form of the system model and estimates the unknown
dynamics. An approach is also proposed to deal with the unknown control coefficient. The equivalence of
the control designed with the proposed method to the control designed with the knowledge of the control
coefficient is established. The control designed with the proposed MFBS technique is compared with the
LQR control in various settings. It is found that for the RIP control problem, the proposed control performs
as good as, or better than the LQR control, but has an advantage of being model-free.

INDEX TERMS Model-free backstepping (MFBS), Normal form, Under-actuated systems, Estimation of
unknown dynamics

I. INTRODUCTION by canceling nonlinear terms. This method has been widely

Rotating inverted pendulum (RIP) is an example of under-
actuated systems, and has long been used as a benchmark
for illustrating and validating new control algorithms. It is
a challenging system because of its characteristics such as
nonlinearity, state coupling, instability, etc. The common
studies of controlling RIP include [1]: swing-up control [2],
[3], switching control [4], balance control [5] and trajectory
tracking control [6]. Among them, the trajectory tracking
control of the RIP refers to driving the arm to track a desired
time varying trajectory while the pendulum is stabilized
at the upward position. This paper presents a model-free
backstepping control design for the RIP.
Different kinds of controls have been investigated for tra-
jectory tracking and stabilization control of the RIP, includ-
ing linear controls, nonlinear controls, self-learning controls,
adaptive controls, and so on. The LQR control is widely
employed for its robustness and optimal performance. The
improved LQR, such as adaptive gain scheduling LQR [7],
fractional order LQR control [8], and parameter-tuned LQR
[9], have been used for the balance control of the RIP. Feed-
back linearization transforms the system into a linear system
used in trajectory tracking of inverted pendulums [10], [11].
In addition, feedback linearization combined with LQR is
also applied to the stability and trajectory tracking control
of inverted pendulums [12]. However, feedback linearization
sometimes removes useful nonlinear terms in the system
[13]. In contrast, the backstepping control design makes use
of the useful nonlinear terms of the system, and deals with
the unfavorable items separately, leading to better robustness
performance. Therefore, the backstepping control is often
used for complex nonlinear systems. The RIP is a good
candidate for the backstepping control.
The usual backstepping design encounters difficulties with
the inverted pendulum. The inverted pendulum, as a typical
underactuated system, has coupled dynamics of the states,
which increases the complexity in the control design and
weakens the robustness, as discussed in [14], [15]. In order
to apply the backstepping control to the underactuated system
effectively, the Olfati transform can be applied to convert the
underactuated system into a cascade form to decouple the
states [16]. The transformation has been applied in different
fields [17], [18] and in the control design of the inverted

VOLUME x, 2019 1

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
 This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2930220, IEEE Access
Huang et al.: Control of Rotary Inverted Pendulum Using Model-free Backstepping Technique
pendulum [19]. The Olfati method provides an effective
approach for the application of backstepping control to the
underactuated system. It should be pointed out that the output
of such transformation is usually in the form of the combined
variables, which is inconsistent with the original output,
and that the nonlinear transformation further increases the
complexity of the system.
The traditional backstepping design is based on the model
of the system. The uncertainties of the system model always
exist. It is a great challenge to obtain accurate mathematical
models. The fuzzy control is a common method to deal with
model uncertainties. The Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy descrip-
tor method to design a balance control of the rotating inverted
pendulum is studied in [20]. The fuzzy control is combined
with the backstepping control to overcome the uncertainty
of the model while ensuring the stability in [21]. The sliding
mode control is often used for the inverted pendulum with un-
certain model parameters. The terminal sliding mode control
is applied to achieve the self-balancing of the underactuated
system in [22]. The sliding mode control combined with
the fuzzy control is shown to achieve robust and precise
balance of the pendulum in [23]. A combination of nonlinear
model predictive control and sliding mode control leading
to an optimal sliding mode cascade control is presented in
[24], which significantly improves the performance of the
controller. The author of [25] also combines the sliding mode
control with backstepping to achieve the balance control
of the inverted pendulum. The neural networks are used
in conjunction with backstepping, which learns online to
approximate the nonlinear terms in the control and uses the
backstepping control to ensure the progressive stability of
the system [26]. In short, the introduction of fuzzy control,
neural networks and sliding mode control has alleviated the
problem of model uncertainties when applying the backstep-
ping design. It should be pointed out that in many studies,
the coefficient of the control input is set to be one [27] or is
assumed to be known [28]. Hence, these methods are known
as being partially model-free. In this paper, we propose a
model-free backstepping which does not need any parameters
in the model including the coefficient of the control. The
only requirement is the knowledge of a rough structure of
the model.
Application of backstepping usually requires the system
model to be in the strict feedback form. When the system
does not meet the requirements, researchers usually resort
to transformations of the state variables. The block back-
stepping method converts the state model of the system in
block-strict form [13]. Other studies [29], [30] adopt adaptive
methods and neural networks to overcome the structural
obstacles of the system in non-strict feedback form. How-
ever, these methods usually imply that the model is partially
known. Reference [31] tried to identify the model in the
strict feedback form with fuzzy method when the model and
coefficients of related variables are both unknown. However,
in the process of model identification, there is a great uncer-
tainty about how to combine the fuzzy basis function vector
2 VOLUME x, 2019
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
when the dynamic model is unknown. In this paper, based
on the actual physical structure of the RIP, a normal form is
introduced for model-free backstepping control, with which
the Lyapunov based virtual and true controls are gradually
designed while the uncertain functions of the model are
estimated from the measurements. The strict feedback form
requirement becomes loose when the derivative estimation
method for the unknown model function and virtual control
is introduced. The control designed this way is proven to be
equivalent to the model-based control.
The backstepping control can guarantee the asymptotically
tracking stability on the hypothesis that the internal dynamics
is exponentially stable [32]. However, if the open-loop sys-
tem is unstable, the backstepping control cannot guarantee
the stability of the system. The inverted pendulum is a unsta-
ble system and requires a more robust design to ensure the
stability of the closed-loop system and the accuracy of track-
ing. The classical control design method uses pole placement,
and other compensation methods to ensure the stability of the
system. For example, the pole placement and the quadratic
optimal control method are used for stability design in [33],
[34]. With the help of partial feedback linearization, a lin-
ear backstepping control with integral adjustment variables
is used to stabilize the inverted pendulum [35]. Fractional
control with compensation technique is used to stabilize
the inverted pendulum [36]. A switching adaptive control
technique based on the generalized multi-Lyapunov function
method and parameter separation technique is established to
ensure the global stability of the inverted pendulum [37]. A
linear time invariant control is designed to achieve asymp-
totical stability of the unstable mobile inverted pendulum
system [38]. These controls are effective to stabilize the
system. Most of these methods are based on the mathematical
model. When the model has uncertainties, it becomes more
difficult to stabilize the unstable system. In order to ensure
the robustness and stability of the system, we modify the
model-free backstepping control to achieve the objective.
In summary, the issues with underactuated system, model
uncertainty, strict feedback form requirement and instability
are the barriers of application of the backstepping control
to the inverted pendulum. In this paper, a model-free back-
stepping control method for the RIP system is proposed,
with the normal form configuration, data-based estimation
and supplementary design to solve the existing problems.
Compared with the existing control methods, the proposed
method has the following characteristics:
1) The design of the control does not depend on the exact
mathematical model of the system. Only the structural
information of the physical system, the I/O data of the
system, the order and dimension information of the
system are required.
2) A model-free backstepping normal form is proposed,
which relaxes the requirement for the strict feedback
form.
3) A method to deal with the unknown coefficient of the
control is proposed, resulting in the total model-free
 This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2930220, IEEE Access

Huang et al.: Control of Rotary Inverted Pendulum Using Model-free Backstepping Technique

backstepping design approach. The proposed control is

proven to be equivalent to the control designed with the
known coefficient of the control.
4) The stability of the proposed backstepping control is
proven with the help of the Lyapunov functions.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section

II discusses the physical structure of the rotating inverted
pendulum. In this section, a standard setting of the model-free
backstepping control is introduced to convert the underactu-
ated system into the cascade feedback normal form. In Sec-
tion III, the estimation of unknown dynamics is discussed.
In Section IV, the data-driven backstepping control with the
help of Lyapunov method is presented. The stability analysis FIGURE 1. The coordinate system for the rotary inverted pendulum.
of the closed-loop system is also carried out in this section.
The simulation and experimental results are presented to
show the effectiveness of the proposed control technique in
Section V. Finally, Section VI concludes the paper. define f4 explicitly as
f4 = −ηu + b1 u + g4 (x1 , x2 , x3 , x4 ) (5)
II. MODEL STRUCTURE AND NORMAL FORM
where g4 (x1 , x2 , x3 , x4 ) includes all the internal forces act-
The schematic of the rotating inverted pendulum is shown in ing on the α coordinate of the system and the system uncer-
Figure 1. One end of the horizontal rotating arm is connected tainties such as ∆1 .
to and driven by a DC motor, and the other end is connected Equation (3) is known as the normal form of a cascade
to the swing rod without an additional control between them. system, and will be the basis for the model-free backstepping
The angle between the swing rod and the vertical direction control design.
is α, and that of the rotating arm and the horizontal direction
is θ. The system is of two degrees of freedom and satisfies
III. ESTIMATION OF UNKNOWN DYNAMICS
Newton’s second law such that the equations of motion are in
the following general form, The goal of the single-stage rotary inverted pendulum control
is that the pendulum is stable at the vertical position and
α̈ = a11 α + a12 θ + a13 α̇ + a14 θ̇ + b1 u + ∆1 the horizontal rotating arm follows a reference motion. A
θ̈ = a21 α + a22 θ + a23 α̇ + a24 θ̇ + b2 u + ∆2 (1) model-free backstepping method will be developed to deal
with the challenging characteristics of state coupling, strong
where ∆i represents the uncertain or nonlinear dynamics of nonlinearity and instability of the inverted pendulum.
the system. Introduce the following transformation, As stated earlier, the functions fi will need to be estimated
x1 = θ, x2 = θ̇, x3 = α, x4 = α̇ (2) at time t. The estimates of the functions fi can be obtained as

We can obtain the equations of motion in a cascade form as, fˆi (t) = ẋ
ˆi − xi+1 , i = 1, 2, 3
fˆ4 (t) = ẋ
ˆ4 − ηu (6)
ẋ1 = x2 + f1 , ẋ2 = x3 + f2 (3)
ẋ3 = x4 + f3 , ẋ4 = ηu + f4 ˆi are obtained from the
where the derivative estimates ẋ
measurements passed through a first-order filter with time
where constant τix > 0,
f1 = 0, f2 = −x3 + θ̈ (4) ˆi (t) + x̂i (t) = xi (t)
τix ẋ (7)
f3 = 0, f4 = −ηu + α̈
or
Note that the terms involving α, θ and their derivatives can be d ˆ  ˆ
τix
ẋi + ẋi (t) = ẋi (t) (8)
replaced with the help of Equations (1) and (3). The functions dt
fi are in general nonlinear with uncertainties through the We introduce an error term of the derivative estimate as
dependence of the acceleration terms α̈ and θ̈. Since the ˆi . Subtracting Equation (6) from Equation
∆ẋi = ẋi (t) − ẋ
control design will be model free, we don’t really need the (3), we obtain the estimate error of fˆi as
details of the mathematical expressions of fi . The functions
∆fi = fi (t) − fˆi (t) = ∆ẋi (9)
fi , which contain the mathematical model, the added items
and uncertainties, will be estimated on line from the response Substituting ∆ẋi into Equation (8), we yield
data. η is a relatively large constant which is used for sub- d∆ẋi
stituting the unknown control coefficient. Hence, we should τix + ∆ẋi = τix ẍi (t) (10)
dt
VOLUME x, 2019 3

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
 This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2930220, IEEE Access

Huang et al.: Control of Rotary Inverted Pendulum Using Model-free Backstepping Technique

When ẋi (t) is smooth and τix > 0, we have [39] Hence, we yield
k∆ẋi (t)k∞ ≤ τix kẍi (t)k∞ (11) V̇1 = −c1 z12 + z1 z2 + z1 ∆f1 (19)
1
In this work, we assume that there exits an upper bound ai > V̇2 = −c2 z22 − z1 z2 + z2 z3 + z2 ∆f2 + z2 x3d (20)
0 such that 2
kẍi (t)k∞ ≤ ai < ∞ (12) V̇3 = −c3 (2z3 + x3d )2 − z2 z3 + 4z3 z4 (21)
1
Therefore, the estimation error is also upper bounded − z2 x3d + 2z3 x4d + 2z4 x3d + x3d x4d
2
√ + 2(2z3 + x3d )∆f3
k∆fi k∞ ≤ τix ai = 2εi < ∞ (13)
V̇4 = −c4 (2z4 + x4d )2 − 4z3 z4 (22)
where 0 < εi << 1 can be made arbitrarily small by
choosing a small time constant τix of the filter. − 2z3 x4d − 2z4 x3d − x3d x4d
+ 2(2z4 + x4d )∆f4
Define the tracking error of each state variable xi as The total Lyapunov function of the system is V = V1 +
V2 + V3 + V4 . Its time derivative reads,
zi = xi − xid (14)
V̇ = −c1 z12 − c2 z22 − c3 (2z3 + x3d )2 − c4 (2z4 + x4d )2
where xid is the “preferred” response of xi . For i = 1, x1d =
xr is the given smooth reference of x1 . For i > 1, xid are + z1 ∆f1 + z2 ∆f2 + 2(2z3 + x3d )∆f3
known as the virtual controls, which will be designed with + 2(2z4 + x4d )∆f4 (23)
the Lyapunov method discussed next.
   
1 1
≤ − c1 − z 2 − c2 − z2
2 1 2 2
− (c3 − 1)(2z3 + x3d )2 − (c4 − 1)(2z4 + x4d )2 + ε
where we have made use of the inequality 2ab ≤ a2 + b2 and
IV. LYAPUNOV DESIGN AND STABILITY Equation (13), and introduced a new notation ε
4 4
1X X
∆fi2 ≤ εi ≡ ε (24)
Let us consider a control of the RIP system such that x1 2 i=1 i=1
follows the reference xr while the standing up position is
stable. Consider several Lyapunov functions for the design We choose c1 > 1/2, c2 > 1/2, c3 > 1 and c4 > 1, and let
of both the virtual and real controls. λmin represent the twice smallest positive eigenvalue of the
quadratic form in V̇ , i.e.
 
λmin 1 1
= min c1 − , c2 − , c3 − 1, c4 − 1 > 0 (25)
2 2 2
1 2 1
V1 = z , V2 = z22 Hence, we have
2 1 2
1 2
V3 = (z3 + x3 ) (15) V̇ (t) < −λmin V (t) + ε (26)
2
1 2 and
V4 = (z4 + x4 ) ε

ε

2 V (t) ≤ + V (0) − e−λmin t (27)
We have λmin λmin
Equation (27) suggests that as t → ∞, the system response
V̇1 = z1 (z2 + x2d + f1 − ẋ1d )
converges to a small neighborhood defined by the inequality
V̇2 = z2 (z3 + x3d + f2 − ẋ2d ) (16) ε
V (∞) ≤ (28)
V̇3 = (2z3 + x3d )(2z4 + 2x4d + 2f3 − ẋ3d ) λmin
V̇4 = (2z4 + x4d )(2ηu + 2f4 − ẋ4d ) which can be made arbitrarily small with proper choices of
the filter time constants τix and the control gains ci . This
From these derivatives, we choose the virtual controls as completes the stability proof.
x2d = −c1 z1 − fˆ1 + ẋ1d Finally, we note that the first order derivative ẋid can be
readily computed with the finite difference method in real
x3d = 2(−c2 z2 − z1 − fˆ2 + ẋ2d ) (17)
time [39].
x4d = −c3 (2z3 + x3d ) − z2 /2 − 2fˆ3 + ẋ3d
and A. EQUIVALENCE OF CONTROL
1 Next, we shall show that introducing the term ηu in Equation
u= [−c4 (2z4 + x4d ) − 2z3 − 2fˆ4 − x3d + ẋ4d ] (18) (3) would lead to an equivalent control term b1 u.
2η
4 VOLUME x, 2019

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
 This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2930220, IEEE Access
Huang et al.: Control of Rotary Inverted Pendulum Using Model-free Backstepping Technique
To simplify the proof, we assume that the model of the sys-
tem is fully known. That is, the functions fi are all given and
are used to replace fˆi (t) in the virtual controls of Equation
(17). Recall that f4 = −ηu + b1 u + g4 (x1 , x2 , x3 , x4 ). We
replace fˆ4 (t) in the true control (18) with g4 (x1 , x2 , x3 , x4 )
and denote the resulting true control as un .
Assume that the true control is implemented in digital
domain. Because of the causality, the right hand side of
Equation (18) is at the time step k and the left hand side is at
time step k + 1. Hence, we have
u (k + 1) = (1 − β) u (k) + βun (k)
b1
where β = η .
We assume that there exists a known upper bound of b1
such that 0 < b1 ≤ B < ∞. We choose η > B so that
0 < β < 1. Equation (29) can be seen as a low-pass filter
with the nominal control un (k) as input and u(k) as output.
Consider a continuous time low-pass filter in the Laplace
domain,
1 Assumption 2. There exits an upper bound ai > 0 such that
U (s) = Un (s) (30)
τs + 1
Using the impulse response invariant method with sampling
time T , we convert Equation (30) to the following equation
in discrete time domain as
T φ
u(k + 1) = e− τ u(k) + T un (k) (31)
τ
Comparing Equations (29) and (31), we have
−T −T β
τ= , φ=
ln(1 − β) ln(1 − β)
It can be seen that when η is large enough, the designed
control is the filtered form of the actual control such that
u ≈ un
Hence, the actual control sent out to the system is b1 u
according to Equations (1) and (4), even though the value
of b1 is unknown.
B. UNSTABLE OPEN-LOOP SYSTEMS
The previous model-free backstepping control design works
well when the open-loop system is stable to begin with. When
the open-loop is unstable, the system goes through longer
and more oscillatory transients. Although it works well in the
simulation, this would lead to failed tests in the experiments.
This phenomenon can also be observed when the system is
slightly non-minimum phase system [40].
A common approach to handle the unstable open-loop
system as discussed in the popular book [32] is to stabilize
the open-loop system before designing the backstepping con-
trol. For the rotary inverted pendulum, the position α = 0
is unstable. The system is considered open-loop unstable.
Let up denote a local stabilizing feedback control. It can
be a common proportional-derivative feedback control. For
example, up = −k1 x3 − k2 x4 , where k1 and k2 are pos-
itive constants. In the simulation and experimental studies
VOLUME x, 2019
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
reported later, we have chosen k1 = 2.6430 and k2 = 0.3621
in a somewhat arbitrary manner. The total control is then
u + up . The model-free backstepping design of the control u
is then for a stabilized system. This way, the entire procedure
remains unchanged. The last equation in Equation (3) would
read ẋ4 = ηu + f4 + ηup = ηu + f˜4 , where we have defined
a new function f˜4 = f4 + ηup .
C. REMARKS ON ASSUMPTIONS
Some remarks on the two key assumptions are in order.
Assumption 1. There exists a known upper bound of b1 such
(29)
that 0 < b1 ≤ B < ∞.
The control coefficient b1 is usually determined by the
voltage to torque conversion factor of the DC motor as well
as the geometrical design of the mechanical system. With a
given size of the motor, the control coefficient b1 must be
finite and therefore bounded. From the motor specifications
and the geometrical design of the system, it is not difficult to
obtain an estimate of the upper bound B.
kẍi (t)k∞ ≤ ai < ∞.
The upper bound of the second order derivative of the state
variable is related to the largest acceleration of the system
that a given motor can generate, and is also the largest ac-
celeration caused by external disturbances that the motor can
overcome in order to stabilize the system. This upper bound,
when properly determined based on the power rating of the
motor, can also serve as an indicator for system warnings.
That is, when the measured second order derivatives of the
(32) state variables are larger than the upper bound, the system is
likely to go unstable because the motor does not have enough
control authority to bring the system back to normal.
(33) V. SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENT
In order to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the
proposed method, we carry out numerical simulations and
experimental verifications of the control, and compare the
control performance with that of a LQR control. We choose
the LQR control to compare because it is a popular control
for this system and is often used as a basis for comparison
with new controls.
The experiments are conducted with the RIP system by
Quanser as depicted in Fig. 2. The swing angle of the in-
verted pendulum goes to zero when the pendulum is vertical
upward, and is positive counterclockwise. The torque applied
to the bottom of the rotating arm is generated by a DC motor
with the input voltage denoted as Vm . The time constant of
the motor is 0.0253 seconds.
The controls are implemented in Matlab/Simulink 2014,
which interacts with the Data Acquisition (DAQ) Device
through the Real-Time Windows Target libraries. The sample
time is T = 0.001 seconds. Two experiments are done. The
first experiment concerns about the balance and disturbance
rejection performance after the pendulum swings up to the
vertical position. The second experiment focuses on tracking
control.
5
 This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2930220, IEEE Access

Huang et al.: Control of Rotary Inverted Pendulum Using Model-free Backstepping Technique

50
Ref
LQR
0 MFBS

θ (deg)
−50

−100
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5

10
0

α (deg)
−10
−20
−30
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5

10

V m (V )
0

−10
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
Time (s)

FIGURE 2. The experimental setup of the rotary inverted pendulum. FIGURE 3. Simulation results of the balance control with the LQR and MFBS.

20 Ref
LQR
A. BALANCE CONTROL MFBS

θ (deg)
0
We first apply the proposed control to balance the RIP such −20
that α = 0 becomes a stable position and compare the control 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
performance with that of the model-based LQR method. Con-
sider the linearized model of the single-stage rotary inverted 50
α (deg)

pendulum as 0

q̇ = Aq + Bu (34) −50

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5

where q = [θ, α, θ̇, α̇]T and
50
 
0 0 1 0
V m (V )

 0 0
0 0 1 
A=  
0 81.4033 −45.8259 −0.9319 
−50
0 122.0545 −44.0966 −1.3972 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
Time (s)
3 3.5 4 4.5 5

T
B = [0, 0, 83.4659, 80.3162]
To have a fair comparison, we consider a common metric
for both the control. That is, both the controls consume the
same amount of fuel in the same period of time, as measured
by
Z tf
Ju = |u| dt
0
In the simulations, we select tf = 3s and Ju = 823. The
corresponding gain of the LQR control is found to be
K = [−5.2915, 28.2188, −3.1413, 3.7286]
with Q = [140, 0, 0, 0; 0, 390, 0, 0; 0, 0, 1, 0; 0, 0, 0, 0.1] and
R = 5.
The initial conditions are the same for both the controls
in the simulation: θ(0) = −86, α(0) = −20, θ̇(0) = 18
and α̇(0) = 14 where the unit of the angles is degree.
The parameters of the model-free backstepping control are
selected as follows. The filter time constants for all the states
are τix = 0.001 seconds. The control gains are c1 = 21,
c2 = 60, c3 = 640 and c4 = 200. η = 1.2 × 1011 . Finally,
the reference signal for x1 is set to be xr (t) = 0.
From now on, we change the notation of control u to Vm ,
the input voltage to the DC motor that executes the control.
6 VOLUME x, 2019
(35) FIGURE 4. Experimental performance of the control used for the simulations
in Fig. 3.
The results of the numerical simulation are shown in Fig.
3. It can be seen from the figure that with the same control
(36) effort Ju , the trajectories by the LQR and MFBS control are
very similar in the numerical simulations. The corresponding
experimental results are shown in Fig. 4. The experiments
have used the same parameters as those for the numerical
(37) simulation. As can be seen from Fig. 4, the system enters
the equilibrium state within 1 second after swinging up. The
maximum swing around the vertical position in the steady
state is 5.1 degree with the LQR control and 1.55 degree with
the proposed MFBS control, which indicates that the MFBS
control performs slightly better than the LQR control.
The initial conditions for the balance control to start after
the swing up control moves the pendulum to the neighbor-
hood of the vertical position are usually random in real time
experiments. This is the reason why the initial conditions in
Figs. 3 and 4 are different.
We have also experimentally investigated the disturbance
rejection performance of the closed-loop system by lightly
hitting the pendulum in the vertical position at time instances

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
 This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2930220, IEEE Access

Huang et al.: Control of Rotary Inverted Pendulum Using Model-free Backstepping Technique

30 50
LQR Ref
20 MFBS LQR
θ (deg)

MFBS

θ (deg)
10 0
0
−10 −50
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 5 10 15 20 25 30

20 10
α (deg)

α (deg)
0 0

−20 −10
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 5 10 15 20 25 30
10 5
V m (V )

V m (V )
0 0

−10
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 −5
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Time (s)
Time (s)

FIGURE 5. Experimental results of the closed-loop system with the MFBS FIGURE 6. Simulation results of the control tracking a sinusoidal reference.
and LQR control subject to disturbances.

50
Ref
LQR
1s, 8s, 20s, and 28s for the MFBS control, and at 2s, 8s, 14s MFBS

θ (deg)
0
and 24s for the LQR control, as shown in Fig. 5. Although it
is difficult to select the same strength, interval and duration −50
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
of the disturbances for both controls in the comparison study, 10
the results do show that the proposed MFBS control can
α (deg)

reject the disturbance as good as the LQR does. 0

So far, both the simulations and experimental studies sug-

−10
gest that the proposed MFBS control has similar or better per- 0 5 10 15 20 25 30

formances when compared with the LQR control. However, 5

the proposed MFBS control does not need the knowledge of

V m (V )

0
the system model.
−5
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
B. TRACKING CONTROL Time (s)

We now study the tracking control problem by simula-
tions and experiments. We consider two reference trajec-
tories θref (t) for both the proposed MFBS control and
LQR control to track. The initial conditions of the system
θ(0) = −0.7557, α(0) = 4.5613, θ̇(0) = 2.8662, and
α̇(0) = −1.7189 are used in the simulation. We have
also selected tf = 50s, and Ju = 5000 for the com-
parison metric. The parameters of the model-free backstep-
ping control are the same as the values used in Section V.
The control gain for the LQR is re-adjusted to be K =
[−9.2612, 28.1568, −2.7576, 3.2190].
We first consider a sinusoidal reference defined as
xr (t) = θref (t) = A sin(ωt)
where A = π/6 rad or 30 degree and ω = 0.5 rad/s.
The simulation and experimental results are shown in Fig.
6 and Fig. 7. It can be seen from both figures that the MFBS
control has the similar tracking performance to that of the
LQR control with a small time delay. Recall again that the
LQR is model based, while the proposed control is not.
Next, we consider a non-smooth square wave reference.
The square wave has the same frequency the sinusoidal
reference in Eq. (38). Fig. 8 and Fig. 9 show the tracking
performance in simulation and experiment. It can be seen
FIGURE 7. Experimental results of the control tracking a sinusoidal reference.
from Fig. 8 that the time-domain specifications achieved by
both the controls such as rise time, overshoot and settling
time are very close.
VI. CONCLUSION
This paper has presented a model-free backstepping control
design procedure. The stability of the control in the Lyapunov
sense is proven. The design method is applied to the balance
and tracking control of a rotary inverted pendulum (RIP). The
(38)
control designed with the proposed method is compared with
the LQR control in various settings. It has been found that for
the RIP control problem, the proposed control performs as
good as or better than the LQR control, but has an advantage
of being model-free.
REFERENCES
[1] M. F. Hamza, H. J. Yap, I. A. Choudhury, A. I. Isa, A. Y. Zimit, and
T. Kumbasar, “Current development on using rotary inverted pendulum
as a benchmark for testing linear and nonlinear control algorithms,”
Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, vol. 116, pp. 347–369, 2019.
[2] S. Jadlovska and J. Sarnovsky, “A complex overview of modeling and

VOLUME x, 2019 7

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
 This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2930220, IEEE Access

Huang et al.: Control of Rotary Inverted Pendulum Using Model-free Backstepping Technique

50 methods to study the balance control of a rotary inverted pendulum,”

Ref
LQR in Proceedings of International Conference on Advanced Robotics and
MFBS
θ (deg)

0 Intelligent Systems, Taipei, Taiwan, 2014, pp. 171–175.

[10] C. Aguilar-Avelar and J. Moreno-Valenzuela, “A feedback linearization
−50 controller for trajectory tracking of the Furuta pendulum,” in Proceedings
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
of American Control Conference, Portland, Oregon, 2014.
20 [11] J. Moreno-Valenzuela and C. Aguilar-Avelar, Feedback Linearization
Control of the IWP. Berlin: Springer, 2018.
α (deg)

0 [12] M. Yue, C. An, and J. Sun, “Zero dynamics stabilisation and adaptive
trajectory tracking for WIP vehicles through feedback linearisation and
−20 LQR technique,” International Journal of Control, vol. 89, no. 12, pp.
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
2533–2542, 2016.
10
[13] S. Rudra, R. K. Barai, and M. Maitra, Block Backstepping Design of
Nonlinear State Feedback Control Law for Underactuated Mechanical
V m (V )

0 Systems. Berlin: Springer, 2017.

[14] H. Oka, H. Suemitsu, and T. Matsuo, “Stabilizing control of inverted
−10 pendulum via interlaced backstepping and forwarding method,” in Pro-
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Time (s) ceedings of the 54th Annual Conference of the Society of Instrument and
Control Engineers of Japan, Hangzhou, China, 2015, pp. 492–497.
FIGURE 8. Simulation results of the control tracking a square wave reference. [15] A. Jabbar, F. M. Malik, and S. A. Sheikh, “Nonlinear stabilizing control
of a rotary double inverted pendulum: a modified backstepping approach,”
Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control, vol. 39, no. 11,
60 pp. 1721–1734, 2017.
Ref
40 LQR [16] R. Olfatisaber, “Normal forms for underactuated mechanical systems with
MFBS
θ(deg)

20 symmetry,” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 47, no. 2, pp.

0 305–308, 2002.
−20
[17] D. Ginoya, P. D. Shendge, and S. B. Phadke, “Delta-operator-based
−40
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 extended disturbance observer and its applications,” IEEE Transactions on
40 Industrial Electronics, vol. 62, no. 9, pp. 5817–5828, 2015.
20 [18] M. M. Azimi and H. R. Koofigar, “Adaptive fuzzy backstepping controller
α(deg)

0
design for uncertain underactuated robotic systems,” Nonlinear Dynamics,
vol. 79, no. 2, pp. 1457–1468, 2015.
−20
[19] Y.-F. Chen and A.-C. Huang, “Adaptive control of rotary inverted pen-
−40
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 dulum system with time-varying uncertainties,” Nonlinear Dynamics,
20 vol. 76, no. 1, pp. 95–102, 2014.
[20] Q. V. Dang, B. Allouche, L. Vermeiren, A. Dequidt, and M. Dambrine,
Vm(V)

0
−20
0 5 10 15 20 25
Time (s)
FIGURE 9. Experimental results of the control tracking a square wave
reference.
control of the rotary single inverted pendulum system,” Advances in
Electrical and Electronic Engineering, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 73–85, 2013.
[3] X. Yang and X. Zheng, “Swing-up and stabilization control design for an
underactuated rotary inverted pendulum system: Theory and experiments,”
IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol. 65, no. 9, pp. 7229–7238,
2018.
[4] C. Duan and F. Wu, “Analysis and control of switched linear systems via
dwell-time min-switching,” Systems and Control Letters, vol. 70, pp. 8–
16, 2014.
[5] Y. Zhang, J. Wang, and H. Li, “Stabilization of the quadruple inverted
pendulum by variable universe adaptive fuzzy controller based on variable
gain h∞ regulator,” Journal of Systems Science and Complexity, vol. 25,
no. 5, pp. 856–872, 2012.
[6] M. Yue, C. An, and J.-Z. Sun, “An efficient model predictive control for
trajectory tracking of wheeled inverted pendulum vehicles with various
physical constraints,” International Journal of Control, Automation and
Systems, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 265–274, 2018.
[7] H. C. T. Nguyen and A.-W. Shen, “Using adaptive gain scheduling
LQR method control of arm driven inverted pendulum system based on
PIC18F4431,” Journal of Harbin Institute of Technology, vol. 20, no. 4,
pp. 85–92, 2013.
[8] A. Rojas-Moreno, J. Hernandez-Garagatti, P. D. L. Vega, and L. Lopez-
Lozano, “FO based-LQR stabilization of the rotary inverted pendulum,”
in Proceedings of Chinese Control and Decision Conference (CCDC),
Yinchuan, China, 2016, pp. 4292–4297.
[9] W. C. Lee, Y. Y. Lyu, T. Y. Hsu, and C. C. Wei, “Using the Taguchi
“Design and implementation of a robust fuzzy controller for a rotary
inverted pendulum using the Takagi-Sugeno descriptor representation,”
in Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in
30 Control and Automation (CICA), Orlando, Florida, 2014, pp. 1–6.
[21] C. W. Chang, C. F. Hsu, and T. T. Lee, “Backstepping-based finite-
time adaptive fuzzy control of unknown nonlinear systems,” International
Journal of Fuzzy Systems, vol. 20, no. 8, pp. 2545–2555, 2018.
[22] L. Mao, J. Huang, F. Ding, and Y. Wang, “Velocity control of mobile
wheeled inverted pendulum,” International Journal of Modelling, Identi-
fication and Control, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 43–51, 2013.
[23] I. Yiit, “Model free sliding mode stabilizing control of a real rotary inverted
pendulum,” Journal of Vibration and Control, vol. 23, no. 10, pp. 1645–
1662, 2017.
[24] K. R. Muske, H. Ashrafiuon, S. Nersesov, and M. Nikkhah, “Optimal
sliding mode cascade control for stabilization of underactuated nonlinear
systems,” Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement and Control, vol.
134, no. 2, pp. 021 020–021 020–11, 2012.
[25] N. Esmaeili, A. Alfi, and H. Khosravi, “Balancing and trajectory tracking
of two-wheeled mobile robot using backstepping sliding mode control:
Design and experiments,” Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems,
vol. 87, no. 3-4, pp. 601–613, 2017.
[26] C.-F. Hsu, “Adaptive backstepping Elman-based neural control for un-
known nonlinear systems,” Neurocomputing, vol. 136, pp. 170–179, 2014.
[27] J. Sun, D. Xu, S. Zha, and G. Le, “Model free backstepping control for
marine power systems,” Revista Espa De Cardiologia, vol. 7, no. 1, pp.
942–948, 2015.
[28] Y. A. Younes, A. Drak, H. Noura, A. Rabhi, and A. E. Hajjaji, “Nonlinear
integral backstepping - model-free control applied to a quadrotor system,”
in Proceedings of International Conference on Intelligent Unmanned Sys-
tems, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 2014.
[29] Y. Sun, B. Chen, C. Lin, and H. Wang, “Adaptive neural control for a
class of stochastic non-strict-feedback nonlinear systems with time-delay,”
Neurocomputing, vol. 214, no. C, pp. 750–757, 2016.
[30] J. Huang, W. Wang, C. Wen, and J. Zhou, “Adaptive control of a class
of strict-feedback time-varying nonlinear systems with unknown control
coefficients,” Automatica, vol. 93, pp. 98–105, 2018.

8 VOLUME x, 2019

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
 This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2930220, IEEE Access

Huang et al.: Control of Rotary Inverted Pendulum Using Model-free Backstepping Technique

[31] B. Chen, X. P. Liu, S. S. Ge, and C. Lin, “Adaptive fuzzy control of YOU FAN is a graduate student in Computer
a class of nonlinear systems by fuzzy approximation approach,” IEEE Technology at Beijing University of Chemical
Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, vol. 20, no. 6, pp. 1012–1021, 2012. Technology. She earned a BS in Computer Sci-
[32] H. K. Khalil, Nonlinear Control. London: Pearson, 2015. ence from Changchun University of Technology in
[33] B. Prakash, B. K. Roy, and R. K. Biswas, “Design, implementation and 2017. Her research interests are model-free back-
comparison of different controllers for a rotary inverted pendulum,” in stepping control and parameter optimization.
Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Power Electronics,
Intelligent Control and Energy Systems, Delhi, India, 2017, pp. 1–6.
[34] N. H. C. Thanh, “The study on the nonlinear control of unstable systems,”
Ph.D. Dissertation, Huazhong University of Science and Technology,
2013.
[35] V. K. Singh and V. Kumar, “Nonlinear design for inverted pendulum
using backstepping control technique,” International Journal of Scientific
Research Engineering & Technology, vol. 2, no. 11, pp. 807–810, 2014.
[36] P. Dwivedi, S. Pandey, and A. S. Junghare, “Stabilization of unstable
equilibrium point of rotary inverted pendulum using fractional controller,”
Journal of the Franklin Institute, vol. 354, no. 17, 2017.
[37] L. Long, Z. Wang, and J. Zhao, “Switched adaptive control of switched
nonlinearly parameterized systems with unstable subsystems,” Automat-
ica, vol. 54, pp. 217–228, 2015.
[38] V. Muralidharan and A. D. Mahindrakar, “Position stabilization and
waypoint tracking control of mobile inverted pendulum robot,” IEEE
Transactions on Control Systems Technology, vol. 22, no. 6, pp. 2360–
2367, 2014.
[39] D. Swaroop, J. K. Hedrick, P. P. Yip, and J. C. Gerdes, “Dynamic surface
control for a class of nonlinear systems,” IEEE Transactions on Automatic
Control, vol. 45, no. 10, pp. 1893–1899, 2000.
[40] J. Hauser, S. Sastry, and G. Meyer, “Nonlinear control de sign for slightly
non minimum phase systems- applications to V/STOL aircraft,” Automat-
ica, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 665–679, 1992.

JIAN-QIAO SUN earned a BS in Solid Mechanics

JINGWEN HUANG earned a PhD in Control
Theory and Control Engineering from Beijing
University of Chemical Technology. She is cur-
rently an Associate Professor in the same univer-
sity. She serves as the Associate Editor of the In-
ternational Journal of Dynamics and Control. Her
research interests include data-driven modeling
and control, nonlinear control and multi-objective
optimization.
from Huazhong University of Science and Tech-
nology in 1982, and PhD in Mechanical Engineer-
ing from UC Berkeley in 1988. In 1994, Dr. Sun
joined the faculty at University of Delaware until
2007 when he moved to University of California
at Merced. He is currently Professor and Chair of
Mechanical Engineering. He serves as the Editor-
in-Chief of the International Journal of Dynamics
and Control. His research interests include vibra-
tions, controls, energy harvesting, and data-driven modeling and analysis of
complex systems.

TINGTING ZHANG is a graduate student

at Beijing University of Chemical Technology.
She earned her BS in Computer Science from
Zhengzhou Normal University in 2017. Her re-
search interests are model-free and backstepping
control.

VOLUME x, 2019 9

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.