Аннотация:We study an optimal control problem for a nonlinear spherical inverted pendulum on a movable base. As the cost functional, the mean-squared deviation of the pendulum from the upper equilibrium is considered, so optimal controls stabilize the pendulum at the unstable upper position. We show that the problem under consideration posses a singular point of the second order and there are spiral-similar solution which attains the singular point in finite time.