I do this to remotely open and close my drive-through 12ft swing gate using a DC motor push-pull actuator. I used an Arduino to accelerate the gate smoothly (huge inertia), de-accelerate it slowly, cause it to creep toward its mechanical stop at low speed, sense overload current, reverse the motor, time the swing and shut things off if the gate hasn't arrived in 35sec, debounce the input switch, etc, etc.
The Arduino platform is ideal for a project like this...