My Senior Project will focus on building the pendulum and implementing firmware to minimize errors and respond to external disruptions. Specifically, the core engineering objectives are to build a physical test bench, develop a high-fidelity digital simulation, and deploy optimal control algorithms such as LQR and LQI. The sim-to-real gap is one of the most pressing issues in modern automation, as the real world introduces noise in the form of friction, heat, and other factors often neglected when building a simulation. I intend to research the extent to which these imperfections affect a system. To achieve this, I will be quantifying the performance degradation between the idealized simulation and the real-world firmware through comparing the effects of steady state errors and measuring the recovery time when adding a disturbance. Remotely, I will frequently meet up with Dr. Shi, who specializes in control theory, to discuss any problems that might arise from my work and to gain insights from a professional who has been in this field for decades. Heading into Electrical Engineering, this seemed like the perfect project for a transition into collegiate-level academics. It combines my interest in embedded systems, math, and automation.