Nonlinear model predictive control of an inverted pendulum

In this paper, nonlinear model predictive control is applied to an inverted pendulum apparatus. The sample interval for control calculations is 25 milli-seconds and the associated non-convex constrained optimisation problem involves 61-variables with 241-constraints. Despite this being a challenging problem, it was solved on-line using a standard sequential quadratic programming approach on a modest hardware platform. The efficacy of the control algorithm is validated via experimental results.