Vision-based control of a flying spherical inverted pendulum

The aim of this paper is to control a spherical inverted pendulum on a quadrotor as a control actuator. The system is modeled using Euler Lagrange formulation considering both the dynamics. And due to the absence of sensors, that can measure states at the ball joints, we propose to use a vision system that will be placed over the Quadrotor in order to determinate the position of the pendulum. For the nonlinear control design, a three-level cascade strategy is proposed. Each level of the cascade system executes a control law designed through the method of backstepping. Simulation results are carried out to corroborate the proposed control strategy using Matlab/Simulink and the Virtual Reality Environment.