Swing up and balance control of the acrobot solved by genetic programming

The evolution of controllers using genetic programming is described for the continuous, limited torque minimum time swing-up and inverted balance problems of the acrobot. The best swing-up controller found is able to swing the acrobot up to a position very close to the inverted 'handstand' position in a very short time, which is comparable to the results which have been achieved by other methods using similar parameters for the dynamic system. The balance controller is successful at keeping the acrobot in the unstable, inverted position when starting from the inverted position.