CCD Camera-Based Ball Balancer System with Fuzzy PD Control in Varying Light Conditions

The Ball Balancer System (BBS) is a 2-DOF system with visual feedback. BBS has broad applications in the field of automotive industry, defense and communication antenna's automation. The accurate trajectory tracking in BBS has always been challenging for researchers. The proposed method focuses on designing the robust Fuzzy-tuned PD (FPD) controller having better error tracking and least oscillation of the ball in varying lighting conditions. The PD parameters, i.e., K
_p
and K
_d
are calculated by using the Fuzzy rules. Furthermore, the Blob analysis algorithm is proposed which can detect the ball even in changing lighting conditions. The proposed method is compared with widely used techniques, i.e., color-based segmentation and PD controller. The rectangular trajectory is achieved using Blob analysis embedded with FPD, whose results are compared with the PD controller combined with color based segmentation technique. The proposed method gave promising results.