Control of nonprehensile rolling manipulation: Balancing a disk on a disk

This paper presents stabilization control of a rolling manipulation system called the disk-on-disk. The system consists of two disks in which the upper disk (object) is free to roll on the lower disk (hand) under the influence of gravity. The goal is to stabilize the object at the unstable upright position directly above the hand. We use backstepping to derive a control law yielding global asymptotic stability. We present simulation as well as experimental results demonstrating the controller.