Hardware-in-the-loop simulation is increasingly being required for the design, implementation and testing of control systems, where some of the control loop components are real hardware and some are simulated. Usually, the real system is software and the control system is hardware. In this study, hardware-in-the-loop simulation is used to test the performance of the interval type-2 fuzzy proportional-derivative (IT2F-PD) controller. The IT2F-PD controller is implemented using a low cost microcontroller for controlling the uncertain nonlinear inverted pendulum. The IT2F-PD controller is able to handle the system uncertainties better than their type-1 (T1) counterparts. The results of the IT2F-PD controller are compared with the TIF-PD controller. The experimental results show that the IT2F-PD controller is made significantly improved the performance over a wide range of the structural uncertainties and the effect of the external disturbances. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.