Ball and beam control system design using microcontroller

Abstract

This project report will present a ball and beam system design using microcontroller. The system consists of two parts. The first part is hardware module and the second part is software module. Hardware module is interfaced with the software module. The ball and beam system is the most popular laboratory model used in control system due to its simple modeling and low in cost. However this system is an open loop unstable system. A ping pong ball will roll on the top of long beam with and acceleration is proportional to the angle of the beam. The ping pong ball may fall down from the beam if the system cannot be control properly. The main objective of the system is to regulate the position of the ball along the beam to its reference position. The main parts in this hardware module are Servo Motor and Sensor. Servo Motor responsible to make the beam moving. Analog distance sensor will detect the range or distance of the steel ball to it reference position. Structure parts are made from aluminum material because less weight and low cost compare to other material such as mild steel and stainless steel where it expensive and heavy in weight. For the software module, it will use microcontroller and this microcontroller must be able to communicate with a PC in order to relay diagnostic and statistic project, and must be able to function in absence of PC. Controller that will be used in this project is Proportional (P) controller and C language will be using to write the programmed using MPLAB software and burn into microcontroller using PIC2 kit software. The main parts in this software module is PIC16F877A, voltage regulator, motor driver for servo motor, boot loader (UIC programmer) and LCD display used to display the characters or current distance.