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Proceedings ArticleDOI

BOBShield: An Open-Source Miniature “Ball and Beam” Device for Control Engineering Education

TL;DR: In this paper, a reference design for the well-known ball-on-beam laboratory experiment is presented, where a spherical ball without direct actuation is only balanced by the inclination of a supporting structure, such as beam, rail or tube.
Abstract: This article presents a reference design for the well-known ball-on-beam laboratory experiment, where a spherical ball without direct actuation is only balanced by the inclination of a supporting structure, such as beam, rail or tube. The design introduced here is completely open-source and utilizes only a handful of off-the-shelf components and 3D printing; resulting in an exceptionally low hardware cost. Moreover, the resulting apparatus fits on a standard expansion module format, known as a Shield, which is compatible with a range of microcontroller prototyping boards from the Arduino ecosystem. This affordable, small, reproducible and open design is thus intended to aid control systems or mechatronics education via hands-on student experiments or even conducting research on a budget. In addition to the hardware design with downloadable project files, we also present an application programming interface and the results of a demonstration example here.
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Journal ArticleDOI
15 Sep 2021-Energies
TL;DR: A new design of an observer is proposed that uses partial output injection and the circle criterion to ensure semiglobal stability and shows that the designed observer outperforms its linear counterpart and does not impede control.
Abstract: Variable moment of inertia systems are common, and a popular laboratory system of this type is the “ball-and-beam”. Such systems are, however, nonlinear and often unstable. Efficient control requires full state information (or at least partial velocities), which are generally difficult to measure. That is why the design of state observers is a relevant problem. In this paper, a new design of an observer is proposed. This new nonlinear observer uses partial output injection and the circle criterion to ensure semiglobal stability. Moreover, we present a complete modeling of the system and systematic testing of the observer in comparison to a baseline in the form of a linear observer. The results show that the designed observer outperforms its linear counterpart and does not impede control.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A proper evaluation and comparison between integer and fractional order controllers is presented and performance of each controller is evaluated in terms of set-point tracking, disturbance rejection, and robustness.

38 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Multidisciplinary Engineering Education (MEE) team at The University of Sheffield have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by recording laboratory experiences and putting videos, quizzes and data online for students to engage with.
Abstract: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, universities across the world have curtailed face to face teaching. Associated with this is the halt to the delivery of the practical experience required of engineerin...

23 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
01 Nov 2017
TL;DR: PID controller for this project is a dedicated design and implementation of a system which balances a ball at a particular point on a beam using a PID controller, which helps towards sophisticated system in grasping and development.
Abstract: Balancing a ball on beam is the classic control problem just like inverted pendulum. Undergraduate students are used to develop the mathematical models of such classic control problems. In this project we theoretically design the PID controller and implement it on a very cheap and cost effective hardware. PID controller for this project is a dedicated design and implementation of a system which balances a ball at a particular point on a beam using a PID controller. The ball is free to move on the beam in any direction due to force of gravity. Here, the PID controller set the angle of the beam to make sure that the ball gets stable at our specified set point by eradicating the error between the current position and the reference point. The whole system could be implement by employing a servo motor, an ultrasonic distance sensor, a microcontroller and a support assembly. We used “MATLAB R2013a” to draw the theoretical response of multiple controller and “Arduino 1.6.8” to draw the real time response of ball & beam setup. This system is prior edge towards correlating our theoretical concepts with real time experimental environment and helps towards sophisticated system in grasping and development.

11 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Jan 2017
TL;DR: PID controller Algorithm based on Arduino microcontroller which depends on the feedback signal is used to control the ball position using linear potentiometer position sensor to obtain a good system characteristic.
Abstract: Ball and beam system is found in most laboratories of control systems engineering due to its simplicity and easiness in construction and control theoretically. The system consists of a motor attached with a beam at the center and a ball, which is placed on the top of beam. The problem with this system, is in the time of an electrical control signal is applied to the motor, the beam can be tilted about its horizontal axis and the ball will roll on the top of the beam. Therefore, if the system cannot be controlled properly, the ball may fall down from the beam. In this paper, PID controller Algorithm based on Arduino microcontroller which depends on the feedback signal is used to control the ball position using linear potentiometer position sensor. MATLAB software program has been used to plot the system response by observing the ball position for a predefined amount of time. The controller parameters have been tuned using trial and error method, tested for different set point tracking and for disturbance rejection in order to obtain a good system characteristic.

11 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A novel reference design for an air levitation system to teach control engineering and mechatronics is introduced, built as a swappable and compact extension shield for Arduino embedded microcontroller prototyping boards.

9 citations