Control of a ball and beam like mechanism | IEEE Conference Publication | IEEE Xplore

Control of a ball and beam like mechanism


Abstract:

Underactuated mechanisms have attracted a lot of attention because they represent a rich class of control systems from a control standpoint and because they offer robot p...Show More

Abstract:

Underactuated mechanisms have attracted a lot of attention because they represent a rich class of control systems from a control standpoint and because they offer robot price reduction due to robot link mass reduction and lower number of robot actuators. Our ball and beam like mechanism is an example of underactuated mechanism. The ball and beam system does not possess a nontriangular structure which allows standard integrator backstepping or forwarding methods therefore approximations of nonlinear control were up to date proposed for the control of such systems. In contrast to Hauser (1992) we proposed a cascaded computed torque controller which is in fact another approximate nonlinear controller. A desirable feature of the cascaded computed torque controller is strong resemblance with standard computed torque method in the case of design and implementation effort. In the case of cascaded computed torque controller the angle of the beam could be constrained. Simulation results for the cascaded computed torque controller were compared with the simulation results obtained for the control approach of Hauser. Experimental results for the cascaded computed torque controller are presented.
Date of Conference: 03-05 July 2002
Date Added to IEEE Xplore: 07 November 2002
Print ISBN:0-7803-7479-7
Conference Location: Maribor, Slovenia

1 Introduction

The Ball and Beam mechanism consists of a beam and a ball on it. The ball is rolling on the beam according to the changing angle of the beam. With our Ball and Beam like mechanism the ball is replaced by a cart which slides ‘frictionless’ on the beam. The task of the Ball and Beam like experiment is to bring the cart from any initial position with any initial speed to a desired position on the beam by applying an appropriate torque to the beam and thereby changing the angle of the beam. The Ball and Beam like mechanism is underactuated like the original Ball and Beam mechanism. The angle of a beam represents the first degree of freedom which is actuated by an electric direct drive motor and the cart sliding on the beam represents the second degree of freedom which is not actuated.

References

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