The problem of swinging up an inverted pendulum on a cart and controlling it around the upright position has traditionally been treated as two separate problems. This paper proposes a control strategy that is globally asymptotically stable under actuator saturation and, in addition, locally exponentially stable. The proposed methodology, which performs swing up and control simultaneously, uses elements from input-output linearization, energy control, and singular perturbation theory. Experimental results on a laboratory-scale setup are presented to illustrate the approach and its implementation. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.