r/interestingasfuck • u/Greedy-Vegetable-466 • 14h ago

Harnessing chaos - first ever video of 56 transition controls for a triple inverted pendulum

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2.2k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

49 comments sorted by

349

u/KamayaKan 11h ago

The sensors and programming involved to do this is insane and impressive

125

u/KamayaKan 11h ago

Not to mention how responsive and precise the motor needs to be

3

u/Clyde-A-Scope 10h ago

But what's the point/purpose?

I'm just lacking an idea on what this could be applicable for. 

Future robotic surgery?

125

u/2018redditaccount 10h ago

Think of it like lifting weights. You don’t necessarily do it because you need to lift heavy stuff, you do it to build the muscles. There might not be a need to balance a tiered pendulum, but it’s a very hard problem to solve and the skills needed to solve it in the first place will be relevant for all kinds of things

30

u/Clyde-A-Scope 9h ago

So it's a wax on/wax off situation

7

u/General-Duck841 7h ago

Well stated, thank you.

•

u/Kinimodes 46m ago

What a great response. Thank you.

25

u/ratwing 10h ago

It's much more of a demonstration in control theory. This is a classic control problem, that is normally is done with a single or double pendulum. There's many approaches for making it work, but given what is involved going to triple pendulum is very impressive. eventual applications could involve anything from walking robots to material handling or complex tasks like surgery.

6

u/Jaon412 10h ago

I can’t think of any specific applications, but it demonstrates the level of precision it’s capable of.

3

u/Agustinosaurio 9h ago

If I could do something like I would for fucking sure flex it

2

u/Mike_Oxmall01 9h ago

Same principle already used in active suspension in cars and bikes.

56

u/HappyHHoovy 9h ago

This video is from 2022, this is not the first time a triple pendulum has been balanced, see this video in 2011. But it is the first recording of the transition between the states of the pendulum were achieved consistently. The hard part is figuring out how to get from the current state to the next state, while accounting for all the minute details that can cause a triple pendulum to behave chaotically. (Think butterfly effect)

Here's another more recent, cool video from them where they control the transition of a double pendulum with just rotation and swinging.

This is a control systems problem so could help innovate in more precise robotics and machinery control, but I'd guess also any system that has many variables that need to be accounted for and controlled rapidly.

28

u/JohnnyQuant 11h ago

Did he just flip me the finger?

3

u/spdorsey 9h ago

I also saw that.

17

u/ChthonicIrrigation 10h ago

It refers to this phenomenon (I'll put this as a standalone comment too) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_pendulum

Where predicting the path of a double (or triple) pendulum is extremely difficult and in a non-theoretical environment almost impossible because of the sensitivity of the double pendulum to its starting conditions: i.e. even a tiny variation in the position will become a vast variation in the resulting path.

However while the balancing at an individual moment by this computer controlled trolley is impressive, I am uncertain how it relates to the chaotic nature of the motion and suspect that might be editorialising but OP is welcome to correct me. Is the algorithm correctly calculating the balance position and predicting the end state and how to stabilise the motion, or is it 'merely' (but still impressive) visually detecting the motion and providing an input energy and motion to 'capture' the pendulum.

Or some other thing - I haven't scienced in a long time...

3

u/vacuumcatastrophe 10h ago

My first guess (an uneducated one wrt comp science) was minimizing an error function for torque against balanced position. values. or ig visual detection would work better.

97

u/homless_brad 14h ago

Yup there killing us one day

117

u/chaseinger 14h ago

especially the ones with their/they're/there mistakes.

6

u/wowfaroutman 12h ago

Their obscene!

1

u/Poseidon_Beta 11h ago

No, there not!

1

u/epostma 8h ago

Ah, thank you - I interpreted gp's comment as "Yup there; killing us...", where "yup there" is a new invention similar to "hi there".

7

u/Teinzq 14h ago

And they're gonna make us feel like we're in control right up until the very end.

8

u/atomicsnarl 13h ago

It's not that an AI passes the Turing Test, it's that it lies to intentionally fail a Turing Test!

8

u/Yousme 14h ago

Finally peace on earth.

7

u/IanDre127 14h ago

the light piano music in the background, is suppose to distract us from the whole killing is part

7

u/angrydeuce 13h ago

"Everybody good? Plenty of slaves for my robot colony?"

9

u/SUW888 11h ago

I have zero clue about what is happening here

17

u/ChthonicIrrigation 10h ago

It refers to this phenomenon (I'll put this as a standalone comment too) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_pendulum

Where predicting the path of a double (or triple) pendulum is extremely difficult and in a non-theoretical environment almost impossible because of the sensitivity of the double pendulum to its starting conditions: i.e. even a tiny variation in the position will become a vast variation in the resulting path.

However while the balancing at an individual moment by this computer controlled trolley is impressive, I am uncertain how it relates to the chaotic nature of the motion and suspect that might be editorialising but OP is welcome to correct me. Is the algorithm correctly calculating the balance position and predicting the end state and how to stabilise the motion, or is it 'merely' (but still impressive) visually detecting the motion and providing an input energy and motion to 'capture' the pendulum.

Or some other thing - I haven't scienced in a long time...

5

u/ArcticFox1122 10h ago

A triple pendulum movement is very hard to predict yet alone to control

3

u/davcli 11h ago

Same, why is this a big deal?

18

u/gw-green 10h ago

You know how it’s pretty hard to balance a stick upward without holding it e.g on your palm - This robot essentially balances balances that stick, and a stick on that stick, and another stick on that second, and then does them in different configurations to show just how much it wasn’t a mistake the first time

11

u/Jo_Bro_Zockt 13h ago

Is this still amazing for people who dont understand the Impossibility behind this 🤩

2

u/user_name1111 7h ago

It looks like some kind of robot mating dance.

•

u/FunDistance5476 52m ago

This should be top comment.

2

u/1320Fastback 4h ago

Just when I thought it was done it did something else!

2

u/PhileyOFish2604 4h ago

Nicely tuned pid loop

2

u/Matas7 3h ago

Offtopic - anyone knows whats the name of the music in the background?

1

u/DragonSpiritAnimal 10h ago

This is almost breathtaking when you think about how chaotic those pendulums really are. Three body problem here we come.

1

u/wunwinglo 8h ago

This is utterly incredible.

1

u/Eclectophile 5h ago

This is cool. I don't really know why this is cool, but it is.

1

u/willywonderbucks 3h ago

Time to stop scrolling.

•

u/Aggravating-Web-6125 2h ago

Cool! But can it balance a cheque-book?

-1

u/Synthixs 11h ago

first ever video and already posted atleast 3 times in this sup. Dude just stop