Real-Time Model Predictive Control for the Swing-Up Problem of an Underactuated Double Pendulum

The 3rd AI Olympics with RealAIGym competition poses the challenge of developing a global policy that can swing up and stabilize an underactuated 2-link system Acrobot and/or Pendubot from any configuration in the state space. This paper presents an optimal control-based approach using a real-time Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (MPC). The results show that the controller achieves good performance and robustness and can reliably handle disturbances.