  In this paper, we present a laboratory mechatronic platform for experimental
verification and demonstration of various dynamical and control system
phenomena exhibited by the Frenkel-Kontorova (FK) model -- a spatially
discretized version of the sine-Gordon equation. The platform consists of an
array of torsionally coupled pendulums pivoting around a single shaft that can
be controlled through the motors at boundaries while all angles are read
electronically. We first introduce and describe the platform, providing details
of its mechatronic design and software architecture. All the files are freely
shared with the research community under an open-source license through a
public repository. The motivation for this sharing is to help reproducibility
or research -- the platform can be useful for others as a testbed for control
algorithms for this class of dynamical systems, for instance, distributed
control or control of flexible structures. In the second part of the paper, we
then showcase the platform using two control problem formulations tailored to
the FK model -- we discuss the practical motivation for studying these
problems, propose (some) methods for solving them and demonstrate the
functionality using experiments. In particular, the first control formulation
deals with non-collocated control/regulation of a single pendulum through one
boundary of the array in the presence of a disturbance sent from the other
boundary; the second control problem consists in synchronizing pendulums'
angular speeds. Some other motivated problems can certainly be formulated,
solved, and demonstrated using the proposed platform.
