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Abstract: This paper presents the rolling acrobot as an example of a new nonlinear controller design technique. The technique uses spline functions for the construction of the pseudo-linearizing controller and extended linearizing observer. Construction of the control law and of the observer is computer automated, and a separation principle holds. The combination of the control law and observer yields a computationally inexpensive nonlinear output controller. Simulation results obtained by implementing the control law on the rolling acrobot verify the ease of design and computational efficiency.