pendulum gets stuck in the upright position

[Armandpl]

Because of friction the pendulum can stay stuck in the upright position. This is a problem because we reset encoders at the of each episode so if the pendulum was stuck, the next episode will start with the alpha angle offset by pi.
Easy fix would be to send a tiny move command to the robot at the end of each episode.
Not sure if we could get rid of friction to avoid having to fix that in software?