Demonstration of “Stabilizing an Unstable System”

In a recent talk at the CMU Robotics Institute, I decided to give a quick impromptu demonstration of what it means to “stabilize an unstable system,” thereby making it easier to apply system identification.  This was in relation to my presentation of my previous PhD student Manu Madhav’s paper:

 

M. S. Madhav, S. A. Stamper, E. S. Fortune, and N. J. Cowan. “Closed-loop stabilization of the jamming avoidance response reveals its locally unstable and globally nonlinear dynamics”. J Exp Biol, 216:4272-4284, 2013.