Design and Implementation a Ball Balancing System for Control Theory Course

The main purpose of the project is to develop one ball balancing system to keep a ball balanced on a beam using a microcontroller and related control algorithm to adjust the angle of the beam with real-time sensory feedback. A constant angle of a beam causes the ball to glissade in theaxial direction due to the gravity. Based on the closed loop real-time control system and well-tuned parameters, it will necessarily adjust the angle of the beam to minimize the error, namely the distance between the actual position and anticipated/setpoint position of the ball. During this process, three prototypes are made and compared with each other especially in aspects of reasonableness and cost. The entire system could be easily designed with the integration of one servo motor, one distance sensor, one microcontroller board, and one mechanical platform. This system can be used for the undergraduate students to learn and understand the fundamental of proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control. Besides, they will comprehend and implement the control algorithm through microcontroller programming. In the situation that if the students have no much knowledge about MATLAB. The interface program is developed to plot the real-time position curve in MATLAB. This simplified system will serve as a bridge to connect the theoretical knowledge and hands-on skill. The proposed method is also applicable to more complicated system

کلیدواژه ها:

Ball Balancing System ، PID Control ، Pedagogical Research ، Real-time Sensory Feedback ، Microcontroller