Development of Arm-driven LEGO Inverted Pendulum for Practical Learning of Control Engineering

Abstract

This study proposes an arm-driven inverted pendulum (pendubot) using LEGO parts as a teaching material for “Control Engineering”. In its development, we use general-purpose motors/sensors and Arduino, which is supported by MATLAB/Simulink, instead of the disused LEGO motors/sensors and EV3 Intelligent Brick (microcontroller). Since the main unit is assembled using LEGO parts, no special machining techniques are required, and anyone can easily build it. Furthermore, this inverted pendulum can be treated as an arm in the vertical plane or a stable crane. As a result, several examples show that we can effectively learn PID control, modeling, and modern control.