Swing-up Control of the Acrobot

(Source: https://github.com/aneesas/1632-project)

This repository contains code to find an optimal controller for the acrobot swing-up problem using pseudospectral methods. To learn more about the acrobot, please see the references at the bottom of the project notebook.

Contents

All of the project code lives in the iPython notebook titled acrobot.ipynb. There is explanatory text within the notebook describing each section's purpose. The core of the optimization is in the function acrobot_swing_up, which takes in boundary conditions and references to dynamics and cost functions (for which multiple options are defined in the notebook).

Requirements

Required packages found on PyPI are listed in requirements.txt and can be installed via pip or similar. Additionally, the following tools are needed to run the included iPython notebook:

• YAPSS v1.0.0-alpha.1
• ffmpeg (for generating acrobot animations only)

Installing ffmpeg

MacOSX does not ship with ffmpeg installed by default. The easiest way to get ffmpeg is via Homebrew:

brew install ffmpeg

If on Linux, similarly use apt:

sudo apt install ffmpeg

The notebook kernel may need to be restarted after installation.