Ball and Beam Educational Tool for Advanced Control System Laboratory

Zulhisyam Salleh1, Ahmad Nasharuddin A.Rashid2, Fizatul A. Patakor3

1,2 Electrical Eng. Department Politeknik Melaka, Malaysia
3 Electrical Eng. Department,Politeknik Ungku Omar, Perak, Malaysia

Abstract: The practical implementation of advanced controlled system for an industrial

application involves a wide variety of integrated field such as control electronics, power

electronics, electric machine and drives. The ball and beam educational tool presented here

allows student to work with all different fields. The system includes a ball, a beam, a motor,

several sensors, intelligent drive and PC as a host. This educational tool involves the modelling

process, analysis and control of the ball and beam system using Matlab/Simulink and

experimental hardware. The control is designed in closed-loop system using PID tuning method.

This research presents the very useful and influential laboratory system that provides PC-based

control software that enable student to compare the simulation and experiment. Thus, it is easier

for students to relate the theoretical concepts that they have learned in class. .

1. Introduction

Curricular on the advanced control system include the study of complex control algorithms that

are often abstract and difficult to understand, as well as there are many aspects of control

electronics. Therefore, to help the students to understand them better, it is necessary to carry out

laboratory sessions with real control systems and hardware implementation. The Ball and Beam

Educational tool that available in Electrical Department in Politeknik Melaka are suitable for

courses in basic control system, control system , and electrical motor control. It is able to control

the position of a stainless steel ball on the track by adjusting the rotating angle of a beam. The

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system consists of two parts, namely the ball and beam body and the control system as Figure 1.

The ball and beam body consists of a v-grooved steel bar and a free rolling ball. The linear sensor

measures the position of the ball on the track by measuring the output voltage from the stainless

steel bar. A DC motor is connects to a gear reducer, which controls the angle of beam,

accordingly realize the position control of the ball. Experiments such as system modelling, design

of feedback controller using P, PD and PID control system design can be achieved with this

experiment platform.

Figure 1: Basic component and their interconnection of Ball and Beam Educational Tool (source:
GBB1004 User Guide and Experiment Manual V 2.051)

With the experiment platform, students will learn the method of control system analysis and

design as they are new in this area. Experiment course based on the control system analysis and

design of ball and beam describes how to select control algorithm for better performance index

after the electrical and mechanical part of the control system is completely confirmed. Method of

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control system analysis and design is introduced gradually according to the learning characteristic

of the student base on Table 1

Table 1: Method of control system analysis

Comprehensive Experiment  PID adjustment
Design Experiment  Status feedback control
Verifying Experiment  System modelling and stability analysis

2. Problem Statement

Most of control problems that we meet in laboratory practical work are straight forward to

control. For a fixed input signal, the output stays more or less constant. However in real life

application, a set of control system are either by design or nature are unstable (Kuo and

Golnaraghi, 2003). The feedback control is essential to make them operate safely. The control of

unstable system is critically important to many of the most difficult control problems and must

study in the laboratory. The problem is that the real unstable systems are usually dangerous and

cannot be brought to the laboratory. Then the ball and beam system is seen can resolve this

paradox. It is simple, safe mechanism and yet has the important dynamic features of an unstable

system.

3. Research Objective

The main objectives of the work presented in this research are as follows:

i. Built a simulation model for ball and beam system

ii. Design a proportional controller (P), proportional plus derivative controller (PD) and

proportional plus integral and derivative controller (PID) for ball and beam system.

iii. Compare the results of P, PD and PID controller

iv. Use the designed controller to control the real plant in experimental rig and compare the

different performance.
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4. Literature Review

The ball and beam system is often used by many control theorists and engineers testing and

analyzing the results of many different theoretical control schemes (Salem, 2013). In order to

stabilize unstable ball and beam system, a vast control system is designed in the literature. Some

researchers used non-model based control strategies such as Neural Network (Li and Yu, 2010),

Fuzzy Logic (Amjad et al., 2010, Iqbal et al., 2005) LQR controller (Rahmat et al., 2010) and

PID(Yu and Ortiz, 2005) to control the ball position and beam angle.

A proportional-integral-derivative controller (PID controller) is a generic control loop

feedback mechanism that widely used in industrial control systems. A PID controller calculates

an "error" value as the difference between a measured process variable and a desired set point.

The controller attempts to minimize the error by adjusting the process control inputs. Although

PID controller can be classified as conventional controller, however it is very important to

student know the concept of the controller before they enter the working environment. In the

absence of knowledge of the underlying process, a PID controller has historically been

considered to be the best controller (Bennett, 1930). By tuning the three parameters in the PID

controller algorithm, student can experience to tuning the parameter of the controller. Finally,

provide control action designed for specific process requirements.

The change in closed-loop response because of the changes in PID parameters with respect to a

step input can be describes as in Table 2.

Table 2: The correlation of Kp and Ki, to rise time, overshoot, settling time and steady-state
error of speed response
Closed-loop Rise time Overshoot Settling time Steady-state
response error
increase
Kp Decrease Increase Small change Decrease

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 Ki Decrease Increase Increase Eliminate
Kd Small change Decrease Decrease Small change
Note that the correlation may not be exactly accurate, because Kp, Ki and Kd are dependent on

each other. In fact, changing one of these variables can change the effect of the other two. For

this reason, the table should be used as a reference when student determining the values of Kp, Ki

and Kd.

The ball and beam system in this educational tool has 2 Degrees-of-Freedom (DOFs). The

ball is assumed to have friction, rotary moment of inertial and coriolis acceleration during motion

on the beam. However, some of the dynamic properties were neglected in this research work

regarding the ball and beam mechanism in order to simplify the dynamic equation of the system.

5. Methodology

The work undertaken in this research is divided into two stages; simulation study and

experimental work. The simulation study is carried out using Matlab version 7.9.0 (R2009b)

involving numerical design of the drives system. The experimental work is realized using

Matlab/Simulink software and then connected to intelligent controller. Comparison performances

for both controllers are investigated.

5.1 Description of the systems

The ball and beam is functionally divided into the following component

 Ball and beam apparatus that include

 Mechanical plant with built-in DC servo motor and DC voltage supply

 IPM100 intelligent servo drive system

 PC with the control program.

The details of functional blocks are discussed in the following sections

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5.1.1 Mechanical Part

The mechanical plant consists of a base, a beam, a ball, a lever arm, a belt pulley, a support block

and a motor as shown in Figure 2. The ball can roll freely along the whole length of the beam.

The beam is connected to the fixed support block at one side and to the movable lever arm at

another one. In turn the motion of the lever arm is controlled by the DC brush motor through belt

pulley. The motor is equipped with built-in rotary optical incremental encoder (1000P/R) that

provides feedback information about current actual rotary position of the motor shaft. In the slot

along the beam there is a linear potentiometer sensor that senses current linear actual position of

the ball on the beam. Both measured positions are fed back to the control system to organize a

closed loop control. As the servo gear turns by an angle theta, the lever arm changes the angle of

the beam by alpha. When the beam is moved away from horizontal position, gravity causes the

ball to roll along the beam. The purpose is to design and implement a control algorithm that

moves the shaft of the motor in such a way that the desired position of the ball is stabilized on the

beam.

Figure 2: Functional of mechanical part

5.1.2 Intelligent Drive

The motion of the motor’s shaft is governed by IPM100 intelligent drive. This is a high precision,

fully digital servo drive with embedded intelligence and 100W power amplifier suitable for

brushless/brush motors. Based on feedback information from sensors it computes and then

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applies appropriate PWM modulated voltage to the motor windings in such a way that a sufficient

torque moves the motor shaft according the user programmed control algorithm.

The drive is called “intelligent” because besides built-in power amplifier for control signal

amplification and PWM-modulation it has an on-board Digital Signal Processor (DSP), memory

and other digital logic which offer advanced motion control and PLC functionality. Real-time

trajectory generation, closed loop servo control, handling commands from host computer and

processing I/O signals are executed on-board according to the stored programs and on-line

commands from host PC. This embedded intelligence provides a true real-time control

performance independent of any delays caused by PC’s non-real time Operating System.

Although the drive can operate both in stand-alone and slave modes, ball and beam application

examples given in this manual make use of its stand-alone features. Physically IPM100 is located

inside the electric control box and communicates with the upper-level PC through RS-232

interface. The DC voltage to the drive is provided by the DC power supply also inside the electric

control box.

5.1.3 PC based Control Software

With this educational tool student can easily programs the drive with the high-level Technosoft

Motion Language (TML) in IPM Motion Studio running on host PC. The code and on-line

commands are downloaded to the drive for execution through PC’s COM port. IPM Motion

Studio is an advanced and intuitive-based Windows Integrated Development Environment for the

set-up and analysis of motion control applications with IPM drives. With this platform it is easy

to:

 Identify motor, sensor and load parameters

 Tune and adjust the servo-drive control loops

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  Build flexible motion control algorithms/programs using TML

 Analyze and evaluate the behaviour of the system

The user can define the motor commands to be applied to the motor. The Motion Wizard tool can

help to generate all TML instructions in a graphical way without need to write any actual TML

code. Specific selection and definition dialogs can be opened, viewed and edited depending on

the command type to be generated. The advanced graphics tools include Data Logger, Control

Panel, and Watches for TML parameters, registers and memory. They can be used to perform

real-time analysis of the behaviour of the motion system.

5.2 System Modelling

The open-loop transfer function of the plant for the ball and beam experiment is given below:

( ) (1)
( )= ( )
=
( )

The design criteria for this problem are:

 Settling time less than 3 seconds

 Overshoot less than 10%

For this problem, the assumptions are ball rolls without slipping and friction between the beam

and ball is negligible. The constants and variables for this example are defined as follows:

Table 3: Parameter of the ball and beam

(m) mass of the ball 0.028 kg

(R) radius of the ball 0.01 m

(d) lever arm offset 0.04 m

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 (g) gravitational acceleration -9.8 m/s^2

(L) length of the beam 0.4 m

(J) ball's moment of inertia

(r) ball position coordinate

(alpha) beam angle coordinate

(theta) servo gear angle

5.2.1 PID Controller Design

The block diagram for this example with a controller and unity feedback of the ball's position is

shown below:

Figure 3:Proportional closed-loop control

Where r is the input and R is the output of the system. First, this educational tool will study the

response of the system shown above when a proportional controller is used. Then, derivative

and/or integral control will be added if necessary. The transfer function for a PID controller is:

+ + (2)
( )= + + =

The closed-loop transfer function for proportional control (P) with a proportional gain (Kp),

proportional plus derivative controller (PD) and proportional plus integral plus derivative (PID)

can be modelled by copying the lines of MATLAB code in Error! Reference source not found.

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into a new m-file. The step response of the simulated system should look like the one shown in

Figure 5. For proportional controller as Figure 5(a), the system remains marginally unstable with

the addition of a proportional gain. Then, in Figure 5(b), the PD controller with the gain Kp=6

and Kd=6 is used to control the ball and beam system. The simulation result is demonstrated that

the system is stable but both the overshoot and settling time are too high. The inertial system has

minus breadth surging signals under the PD controller. Then, the ball and beam system is

controlled using PID controller with the following parameters: Kp=15, Kd=10, Ki=0.5. As Figure

5(c), the result has met the design requirement, where the overshoot is less than 10% and the

settling time less than 3 sec. Students can change the gain of the controller to some value and see

the output of the simulation.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%%%% Ball&Beam PID Control M File %%%%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

m = 0.11;
R = 0.015;
g = -9.8;
L = 0.4;
d = 0.04;
J = 2*m*R^2/5;
K = (m*g*d)/(L*(J/R^2+m)); %simplifies input

num = [-K]; % P Controller

den = [1 0 0];
ball=tf(num,den);
kp = 3;
sys_cl_P=feedback(kp*ball,1);
subplot(3,1,1)

step(0.25*sys_cl_P)
title('Step Response of P Controller')

kp2 = 6; % PD Controller
kd2 = 6;
contrPD=tf([kd2 kp2],1);
sys_cl_PD=feedback(contrPD*ball,1);
t=0:0.01:10;

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subplot(3,1,2)

step(0.25*sys_cl_PD,t)
title('Step Response of PD Controller')

kp3 = 15; % PID Controller

kd3 = 10;
Ki=0.5;
contrPID=tf([kd3 kp3 Ki],[1 0]);
sys_cl_PID=feedback(contrPID*ball,1);
t=0:0.01:10;
subplot(3,1,3)

step(0.25*sys_cl_PID,t)
title('Step Response of PID Controller')
Figure 4: Programming code for P, PD and PID controller

S t e p R e s p o n s e o f P C o n t r o lle r

0 .5
A m p litu d e

0 .2 5

-0 .2 5

-0 .5
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
T im e ( s e c )

(a)
S te p R e s p o n s e o f P D C o n tro lle r

0 .3
A m p litu d e

0 .2

0 .1

0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
T im e (s e c )

(b)

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 S tep R esponse of P ID C ontroller

0 .3

A m plitude
0 .2

0 .1

0
0 1 2 3 4 T im e 5(sec) 6 7 8 9 10

(c)
Figure 5: Simulation result of step response under different controller (a) P controller, (b) PD controller
and (c) PID controller

5.3 Experimental Rig

The closed-loop control algorithm employed in the demo application example is given in Figure

Figure 6: Structure Of The Control Algorithm

The DC servo motor provides actuation of the beam via a gear. The PID control algorithm inside

IPM100 intelligent drive has been employed in an inner control loop as a motor position

controller. The PID gain is chosen in such a way that the motor exhibits a fast response without

overshoot. The drive realizes the control according to the following sequence:

1. It downloads the control program written by the user in Matlab/Simulink via RS232

interface and stores it in the on-board internal memory

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 2. The feedback information is read from motor encoder and linear potentiometer of the

beam every discrete sample time (the sample time is also programmable; 5 ms is default

value for the demo program)

3. The on-board DSP decodes the downloaded program and computes the control signal

according to the programmed algorithm based on feedback position information

4. The computed resulting control signal is amplified and PWM modulated by IPM’s power

stage

5. The motor of the mechanical plant is powered in such a way that the rotation of its shaft

balances the ball on the beam around the user-specified position.

5.3.1 PID controller Design

Figure 7 shows the program control in Matlab/Simulink that link to the IPM100 intelligent drive

and Figure 8 shows the switch of controller mode. In this experiment, student can easily switched

from the mode of P controller, PD controller and PID controller and key in parameter of the

controller gain in GUI. Figure 9 shows the result of the experiment. Large fluctuation observed in

P controller and the system stabilizes quickly under the PD controller though the steady state

errors are big as in Figure 9(b). For PID response as Figure 9(c), steady state error has been

clearly lowered. All of the design requirements are satisfied. With this experiment student may

try different parameters to obtain a satisfactory response in practice.

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Figure 7: PID controller in Matlab/Simulink

Figure 8: Controller Mode

(a)

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 (b)

(c)
Figure 9: Experimental Results Under (a)P Controller, (b) PD Controller (c) PID Controller

6. Conclusion

A Ball and Beam Educational Tool that allows student to make in-depth analysis of P, PD and

PID controller have been presented. It is simple, compact and safe, is the best laboratory solution

to advanced control system. Equipped with modern intelligent power drive module and intuitive

programming Windows interface it is an ideal tool for control systems modelling. It is a piece of

laboratory equipment that designed especially for teaching advanced control courses to students

and for doing study in motion control field. It can serve as a convenient tool for practical

implementation of many classical and modern control system design methods. The controller

design can be expanded to root locus method and frequency domain response method.

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Appendix

A. Technical Specification :

Moving range 400mm Ball diameter 30mm

Control < 5mm Motor DC servo 70W
precision
Synchronous 4 Power supply AC220V 50HZ 1A
belt reduction (AC110V optional)
ratio
Weight < 10Kg Dimension 530 x 200 x 332 mm

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References

Amjad, M., Kashif, M., Abdullah, S. and Shareef, Z. 2010. A Simplified Intelligent Controller for
Ball and Beam System. Education Technology and Computer (ICETC), 2010 2nd
International Conference on, 2010, IEEE, V3-494-V3-498.
Bennett, S. 1930. A History of Control Engineering.
Iqbal, J., Khan, M. A., Tarar, S., Khan, M. and Sabahat, Z. 2005. Implementing Ball Balancing
Beam Using Digital Image Processing and Fuzzy Logic. Electrical and Computer
Engineering, 2005. Canadian Conference on, 2005, IEEE, 2241-2244.
Kuo, B. C. and Golnaraghi, M. F. 2003. Automatic Control Systems, John Wiley & Sons New
York.
Li, X. and Yu, W. 2010. Synchronization of Ball and Beam Systems with Neural Compensation.
International Journal of Control, Automation and Systems, 8, 491-496.
Rahmat, M. F., Wahid, H. and Wahab, N. A. 2010. Application of Intelligent Controller in a Ball
and Beam Control System International Journal On Smart Sensing And Intelligent
Systems 03, 46-60.
Salem, F. A. 2013. Mechatronics Design of Ball and Beam System; Education and Research
International Journal of Computational Engineering Research, 03, 54-79.
Yu, W. and Ortiz, F. 2005. Stability Analysis of Pd Regulation for Ball and Beam System.
Control Applications, 2005. CCA 2005. Proceedings of 2005 IEEE Conference on, 2005,
IEEE, 517-522.

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