Global nonlinear control of the ball and beam system

In this paper, we study the regulation problem for the ball and beam system. Since the system does not have well defined relative degree, exact input-output linearization method may fail. The approximate linearization approach can only be used in a limited region. By representing the system as a fuzzy dynamic model, we give a global control law which is the weighted average of two local stabilization control laws defined over different subspaces. The simulations show that this method gives a much larger stability region than the approximate input-output linearization method.