The swing-up control of a triple pendulum on a cart is presented, where the controller is based on a two-degrees-of-freedom scheme consisting of a nonlinear feedforward controller and an optimal feedback controller. The point-to-point transition task is treated as a nonlinear two-point boundary value problem with free parameters resulting from the suitably projected input-output dynamics. The main focus of the paper is on the experimental realization of the triple pendulum swing-up maneuver. (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd