A study of different controller strategies for a ball and beam system

Abstract

This paper presents several control approaches that consist of a conventional controller, modern controller and intelligent controller and the performance of those controllers that were employed in a ball and beam system. The ball and beam system is one of the examples of a nonlinear and unstable control system. It consists of rigid beam which is free to rotate in the vertical plane at the pivot, with a solid ball rolling along the beam. The control problem is to position the ball at a desired point on the beam by controlling the motor voltage as the input of the system. Scope of investigation is on proportional (P) and proportional-derivative (PD) as the conventional controller, pole placement for the modern controller, and fuzzy logic for the intelligent controller. The mathematical modeling is linearised in order to be used with the linear control and followed by designing the entire system and simulation in MATLAB. Each controller performance is analyzed and compared using the step response. An appropriate graphic user interface (GUI) has been developed to view the animation of the ball and beam system.