An Inverted Pendulum for Xmas
Written by Lucy Black   
Sunday, 27 December 2020

This year's holiday robot videos have been a bit predictable, but at last I found one that was interesting - an inverted pendulum balanced by a drone.

The inverted pendulum is a favourite of AI and robotic systems. Another way to describe it is to say that the task is to balance a pole on the palm of your hand. This is a classic reinforcement learning task. Usually the pole is balanced on the base of a railway truck which is moved backwards and forward in an effort to keep it upright.

invetedpen

I have seen inverted pendulum tasks solved using a quad-rotor in place of a truck, but this one is incidental and used without ceremony or explanation - it forms the trunk of the "xmas tree" display created by  Dynamic Systems Lab at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies: 

How fast something that once was a state of the art achievement has become a xmas decoration...

 

invertedpendulum

The video is short and sweet and there's a coda in the credits where a stationery quad-rotor joins in a rendition of Jingle Bells.

More Information

https://www.dynsyslab.org/vision-news/

Related Articles

Juggling Quadrotors

Watch An Inverted Pendulum - Arduino-Driven

Worm Balances A Pole On Its Tail

To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter, subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin.

 

Banner


Google Releases Python Client For Data Commons
01/07/2025

Google has released a new Python client library for Data Commons based on the V2 REST API. They say the new library enhances how data developers can make use of Data Commons.



Konrad Zuse Born On This Day In 1910
22/06/2025

Today marks the 115th anniversary of Konrad Zuse. Although his name may not be familiar in English-speaking circles, in Germany he is known as "der Vater des Computers". He does indeed have a strong c [ ... ]


More News

pico book

 

Comments




or email your comment to: comments@i-programmer.info

Last Updated ( Sunday, 27 December 2020 )