DEBRE BERHAN UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
DEPARTEMENT OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

STREAM: INDUSTRIAL CONTROL ENGINEERING

Individual Assignment
Course Title: Modern Control System
Course code: ECEg4168
Submitted by: Mengistu Biruke ………ID..DBUR/0535/12
Submitted to: Instructor Getasaw M.
Submission date: 08/10/2015

Debre Berhan, Ethiopia

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Comparison of LQR and Pole Placement Design Controllers for Controlling the
Inverted Pendulum
Contents covered in this paper include: -
 Modelling an inverted pendulum
 Designing controller for modelled system
 full-state feedback (pole placement) and
 Linear Quadratic Regulator controller method

Summary of the paper

Based on the research paper, it was found that both LQR and pole placement
design controllers have their advantages and disadvantages in controlling the
inverted pendulum. The pole placement design controller was found to be more
effective in controlling the pendulum when there were disturbances in the system.
It was also found to be more robust and stable when compared to the LQR
controller. On the other hand, the LQR controller was found to be more effective
in controlling the pendulum when the system was free from disturbances. It was
also found to be more accurate and faster when compared to the pole placement
design controller.

As we consider from this paper starting from system model up to system

response the following parameter for the two controllers can be identified:

1. Mathematical model: Both controllers require a mathematical model of the

inverted pendulum system. However, the pole placement design method requires
that the system be linear and time-invariant, while LQR can be applied to
nonlinear and time-varying systems.

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2. Control objective: The pole placement design controller aims to place the poles
of the closed-loop system at desired locations in the complex plane. LQR, on the
other hand, aims to minimize a cost function that penalizes the error between the
reference and actual system outputs.

3. Performance: LQR is generally faster and more accurate than the pole
placement design controller in controlling the pendulum when the system is free
from disturbances. However, the pole placement design controller is more
effective in controlling the pendulum when there are disturbances in the system.

4. Tuning: Tuning the pole placement design controller requires an understanding

of the complex plane and pole locations, while LQR can be tuned using the
weighting matrices in the cost function. Overall, both controllers have their
advantages and disadvantages in controlling the inverted pendulum.

 In this paper value of for LQR is varied and the performance of controller is
tested which is as value of R increase the performance of controller also
increase.

Generally, Provided LQR controller method resulted better results rather than the
simple state feedback, but makes some troublous because of selection of
constants of controller. Constant of the LQR controller can also be adjusted by the
heuristic techniques for better results.

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