Furuta pendulum is an underdriven and unstable controlled object with one input and two outputs, and has an open-loop zero point at the origin of the complex plane. In this paper, a nonlinear dynamic model of the Furuta pendulum is established by the Eulerian-Lagrangian method, and a series-connected PID control strategy is designed by using the root locus method and the frequency domain analysis method based on the local linearization model at the steady-state operating point. Besides, an LQR control strategy is designed based on the discrete state-space model. In addition, a comparative analysis of the PID control strategy and the LQR control strategy is conducted, and it is found that the LQR control strategy can achieve stable control of the outer loop in the case of unstable inner loop. Finally, the effectiveness of the two control schemes is verified by real-time control experiments.