An open-ended ball-balancing laboratory project for undergraduates

Author

Rosales, Evencio A. ; Ito, Bennett T. ; Lilienkamp, Katie A. ; Lundberg, Kent H.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Mech. Eng., Massachusetts Inst. of Technol., Cambridge, MA, USA

Volume

2

fYear

2004

fDate

June 30 2004-July 2 2004

Firstpage

1314

Abstract

A new laboratory project has been designed for an introductory course in feedback systems. For this project, kits are provided to students to construct ball-on-beam electromechanical systems with analog control. The students must accurately model the system and design the compensator circuitry. The students are encouraged to rework a variety of elements to improve the system such as: sensor selection and placement, the design of the transmission mechanism, the features (size and mass) of the ball, the power electronics, and the motor drive. These ball-balancing kits provide an open-ended design problem as well as a final product to keep and demonstrate to peers, advertising the course to future students.

Keywords

control engineering education; control system synthesis; educational courses; feedback; sensors; student experiments; analog control; ball balancing kits; ball balancing laboratory project; ball-on-beam electromechanical systems; compensator circuitry; feedback systems; introductory course; motor drive; open ended design problem; power electronics; sensor placement; sensor selection; student kits; transmission mechanism design; undergraduates;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

American Control Conference, 2004. Proceedings of the 2004

Conference_Location

Boston, MA, USA

ISSN

0743-1619

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8335-4

Type

conf

Filename

1386756