Computer Applications in Electrical Engineering

Ball-and-beam laboratory system controlled

by Simulink model through dedicated microcontrolled-Matlab
data exchange protocol

Krzysztof Nowopolski
Poznań University of Technology
60-965 Poznań, ul. Piotrowo 3a, e-mail: Krzysztof.Nowopolski@put.poznan.pl

A ball balancing on a beam is a perfect platform for demonstration various control

strategies. The task is to place ball rolling freely, in a reference position along the beam
driven by a motor, rejecting disturbances. The research system consists of mechanical
platform with stepper motor and two infrared ball position sensors, power supply and
electronic controller based on a 32-bit microcontroller connected to Matlab/Simulink
software running the main control algorithm. Designed in Simulink input and output
subsystem blocks contain all functions required to provide data exchange with
microprocessor controller of the mechanical system. Developed data exchange protocol
and its implementation both in microcontroller software and Simulink subsystems allow to
use this complete system for educational purposes: the controller designer is free to
develop supervisory control layer, not going into details of system operation. The results of
system operation with P, PD and LQR control laws are shown at the end of this paper.

KEYWORDS: beam-and-ball, interface, MATLAB, Simulink, stepper motor, SimMechanics,

linear position control, microcontroller, 32-bit microcontroller, LQR control law

1. Introduction

Modern university courses of control theory should not focus only on control
systems simulations and textbook computational exercises. There is a rising
demand on impressive laboratory systems that can be easily configured and
reprogrammed for work with user-defined control strategies to develop students
engineering abilities. An objective of the design and research work described in
this paper is to develop a laboratory control system with an interface to Matlab
computing environment. The main requirements were: interface that allows to
implement control laws in an easy manner (graphical user interface is preferred),
compact size, low cost, simple design, minimalized number of sensors, utility for
education purpose. There are only a few classical systems, that can satisfy this
conditions, one of them is the presented ball-and-beam laboratory system.
The system consists of a ball rolling freely on a beam, which is driven by an
electric motor. The task is to keep the ball in one reference position rejecting
disturbances, or to track the reference position signal, tending to keep the control

310
 K. Nowopolski / Ball –and–beam laboratory system controlled …

error at negligible level. Both accuracy and dynamic aspects of the control need to
be taken into consideration during design of the control strategy.
The system is unstable, underactuated and nonlinear and therefore it is treated
as an appreciated benchmark for various control strategies [1]. Owing to the
presented in the article microcontroller-Matlab data exchange interface, this
laboratory system can be easily adapted as control theory laboratory practice for
Control Engineering, Computer Science or Electrical Engineering students.

2. Laboratory system
2.1. Mechanical system
There are two basic mechanical layouts of the beam-and-ball system. First one,
shown in the Figure 1a, consists of an electric motor, connected directly through
its shaft to the beam, which center is located in the motor shaft axis. The main
principle of the second layout is shown in the Figure 1b. One end of the beam is
attached to a motionless rod, and the second one is connected to a moveable rod
(length L) attached to a disc (diameter 2R) driven by the motor. All mentioned
joints are fitted with ball bearings.

(a) (b)
Fig. 1. Two basic layouts of ball-and-beam system: a) beam driven by a rod,
b) motor shaft placed in the center of beam

Since the composition of mechanical parts of second layout creates

a mechanical gear, this solution ensures much better accuracy of the beam
positioning than a layout with a motor shaft placed in the center of the beam. The
correlated result of the gear application is decreased demand for electric motor
power. On the other hand, for first layout much less mechanical parts are needed.
It brings two main advantages: the costs of the whole construction decrease, and
the kinematic chain complexity is lower. In first layout there is only one angular
position that needs to be taken into consideration. In the second one, there are
three angle values that need to be processed to find system state accurately. Due to
this fact, the number of trigonometric functions that need to be computed is
enlarged, so more powerful controller is required to manage with this task.
Although, for small tilt angles some simplifications may be introduced. Under
311
 K. Nowopolski / Ball –and–beam laboratory system controlled …

condition, that the motor angle tends to 0, it can be assumed that moveable rod is
perpendicular to the beam, so trigonometric transformations are negligible in this
joint. Therefore, the relationship between motor shaft angular position α and beam
angular position β is approximated by formula 1.
R
β= α (1)
L
In order to increase the accuracy of angular positioning of the beam, an
additional gear is added between motor shaft and the disc.
Before the ball-and-beam mechanism was constructed, complex analysis of the
system operation, based on a computer model, was done. The model of ball
movement was derived explicitly from the Lagrange-Euler equations, presented
also in [2, 3]. Formula (2) describes relationship between ball linear position x and
beam inclination β. Ball mass, radius and momentum of inertia are represented by
parameters m, r and J respectively.
m g
xt    sin  t  (2)
J
m 2
r
Due to mentioned complicated structure of the mechanical construction, the
system driving the beam (kinematic chain between motor and the beam) was
modeled by using Simscape SimMechanics toolbox. This powerful environment
allows to analyze kinematic properties of the modeled system after providing basic
parameters of bodies and joints that it contains, not going into details of
trigonometric transformations between parts of the system.
The assumed dynamics of the system was rather low, hence the application of a
stepper motor was acceptable. This way motor shaft position control is kept at
extremely simple level, since it can be run in an open loop, with no additional
encoders or other angular position sensors. The electrical stepper motor driving the
beam, was simulated using the following equations [4]:
 T t   K   sin  N  cos N  it 

 dit    R  it   1  ut   K   t    sin  N   (3)
 dt L L L  cos N 
  
Two-element vectors i and u represent respectively currents and voltages in
stepper motor windings. Basic motor parameters that have been taken into
consideration are: winding resistance R and inductance L, and motor constant K.
The motor constant is proportional to number of phases, stator poles and magnetic
flux of each pole. The output of the motor model is torque signal, that is multiplied
by the gear coefficient n and then feeds the SimMechanics system model. The
SimMechanics model output values are motor angular velocity ω and position θ.
These two values are multiplied by gear coefficient n to calculate the motor shaft

312
 K. Nowopolski / Ball –and–beam laboratory system controlled …

angular position α and the beam inclination β. Interconnection between elements

of simulation model is shown in the Figure 2.

Fig. 2. Overview of computer model of the beam-and-ball mechanism

The simulation model was derived and designed for three general reasons: to
analyze the behavior of the system, to choose the basic mechanical parameters of
the system (such as dimensions and masses of the beam, rod and disc, required
torque), and preliminary examine some basic and most promising control
strategies. P, PD and LQR control laws were implemented as the controller of the
simulation model. One of the basic conclusions of this simulation research was: it
is essential to bring the velocity to zero, not only control the ball position.
Therefore the most simple proportional controller will not allow to stabilize the
ball in a reference position.

Fig. 3. Overview of the built laboratory system: 1 – stepper motor (behind a metal plate),
2 – disc connected to the beam by a rod, 3 – beam, 4 – ball, 5 – infra-red position sensors
313
 K. Nowopolski / Ball –and–beam laboratory system controlled …

Taking into consideration results of the described analysis, the mechanical

construction of the laboratory system was designed and built. The model was used
to choose an optimal electrical motor for this system, as well. The overview of the
construction is shown in the Figure 3.

2.2. Microprocessor controller

The heart of the microprocessor controller of the laboratory system is

STM100RB microcontroller. The following operations are the main tasks of this
32-bit ARM architecture device: driving the stepper motor, measurement of the
ball position and communication with supervisory control layer, i. e. computer with
running Matlab/Simulink model. The microcontroller drives the motor by A4988
integrated circuit. This chip contains in one package both signal translator and two
full transistor bridges, each for one phases of motor windings. Therefore, all
signals that microcontroller sends to the A4988 driver are: selection of the
microstep precision (configured only once at the system startup, 3 lines), direction
signal (1 line) and step impulses (1 line). Both switching between phases and motor
current control are provided by the A4988 driver. The microstep precision in
stepper motor drive is a very desired feature, since it ensures smooth movement of
the shaft even at low velocities, avoiding resonances that may occur in the
mechanical construction and within the motor structure itself. On the other hand,
reducing the microstep size may decrease also the repeatability of the drive. The
selected microstep size is 1/16 of a full step and the maximum velocity is limited
by microcontroller software to 28 deg/s to avoid losing steps.
The ball position measurement is based on two GP2Y0A41SK0F infra-red
analogue position sensors placed at the both ends of the beam. This redundancy
within the number of sensors is related with small operation distance of these
devices, limited to about 30 cm (about 1 ft). The beam is 0,5 m long (1,7 ft), so one
sensor is not able to measure the distance along whole beam. The other
disadvantages of these infra-red sensors, such as long reaction time (about 30 ms)
and small precision of resistive photoelement (low-budget substitute of CCD) are
compensated by very low price. Voltage is the output signal of the position sensor.
Since the signal power is very small, it is susceptible to interference. Therefore
both analogue RC filter placed before AD converter of the microcontroller and
digital filter implemented in microcontroller software are required to obtain useful
signal. Since the response time of the sensor is so long, the filters can also have
large time constants. In the next stage the infra-red sensors will be replaced by
vision system.
Communication with computer is running by UART interface of the
microcontroller. Since the vast majority of modern computers is not equipped with
any RS-232C port, the common translator MAX232 (converting UART voltage
levels to RS standard) was replaced by FT232RL integrated circuit. This device
314
 K. Nowopolski / Ball –and–beam laboratory system controlled …

uses physical layer of USB interface, but reports in operating system of the
computer as a virtual serial port (see Fig. 4). This way the simplicity of UART
usage and its very good Matlab implementation may be combined with universality
of the USB interface.

Fig. 4. Diagram of physical layers interconnection

3. Data exchange protocol

3.1. Frame of data and data exchange cycle

As it was mentioned in the section 2.2, the microcontrollers tasks are focused
on the acquisition of ball position and stepper motor positioning. Whole algorithm
of ball positioning and control law may be easily implemented and changed in real
time in the running computer simulation, using GUI. This user-friendly way of
operation is ensured by the data exchange protocol described below.
The data exchange protocol is very simple, but effective. Two sides of the
communication process are: microcontroller that works as a server and a PC which
is a client. There are only three different types of frames included in the protocol.
Each communication cycle is initiated by the client – the computer software.
The initiation frame contains two bytes. These values is characteristic for
transmission initiation and threaten in any other frame as inadmissible.
The microcontroller response contains six bytes: two integer values
representing measurements of voltage outputs of the ball position sensors, and the
third integer value – momentary position of the stepper motor shaft. The shaft
position is estimated by counting the number of step impulses, assuming, that
conditions of motor operation (limited rotational speed, small torques required to
pull up and hold the beam) do not allow to lose steps. If there is no server
(microcontroller) response, the initialization is repeated periodically.
After receiving the microcontroller response frame, Matlab control algorithm
computes new reference motor shaft position. This information is sent to
microprocessor system as a two-byte integer number, equal to the number of
315
 K. Nowopolski / Ball –and–beam laboratory system controlled …

microsteps of the motor shaft to be done. Simple diagram in the Fig. 5

recapitulates the data exchange order.

Fig. 5. Diagram of data exchange protocol

3.2. Matlab implementation

The Matlab implementation of the interface focuses on the usage of Simulink

blocks from Instrumentation Control Toolbox. Incoming data are received by
Query Instrument block, while the new reference shaft position is sent by
To Instrument block. The basic configuration of both of these blocks is similar:
a valid serial port number and baud-rate have to be selected. An important thing is
to set a small received and sent data buffer sizes. If the buffer size is greater than
20 bytes, the software tends to fill the buffer firstly, rather than provide new data
to the serial interface. This makes the communication too slow to control the ball
position, since transmission of new reference values to microcontroller becomes
strongly delayed.
Incoming data received by the Query Instrument blocks form a buffer, that
needs to be split into particular values. It is done by Unbuffer blocks (see Fig. 6),
that divide each frame into three values described in section 3.1. The motor shaft
position can be easily converted to the angular position in degrees, but the ball
position needs more specific operations to be found, since the voltage vs. position
characteristic is strongly non-linear (Fig. 7). Moreover, the characteristic is
ambiguous – therefore, all the measurements are treated as larger than 4 cm. The
best results of the ball position x approximation gives inversion of position sensor
sample v combined with 2nd degree polynomial (formula 4).
2 i
1
x( v)   ai    (4)
i 0 v
Data received from two sensors are compared, and the measurement with
higher voltage value is taken into consideration, since it indicates, that the ball is
closer to this sensor and this measurement is more reliable. All the mentioned

316
 K. Nowopolski / Ball –and–beam laboratory system controlled …

preprocessing operations are gathered in one subsystem, which structure is shown

in Figure 6. This subsystem, combined with appropriately configured To
Instrument block allows to design own control algorithms, not going into details of
system operation. The examples are presented in the section 4. Real transmission
speed is 125 communication cycles/s – it is over three times faster than the
response time of the infra-red position sensors.

Fig. 6. Simulink subsystem for received data pre-processing

Fig. 7. Non-linear, ambiguous ball position sensor characteristic with its approximation

317
 K. Nowopolski / Ball –and–beam laboratory system controlled …

4. Tests of the complete control system

The most satisfactory results of laboratory system examination were obtained

using LQR control law. Two communication subsystems described in section 3.2
were utilized as a hardware abstraction layer, all other blocks are standard
Simulink operations. Simulink model calculation are run in constant-step mode,
only discrete-time elements are allowed within model design. Controller model
diagram is shown in the Figure 8.

Fig. 8. Scheme of LQR controller designed for real laboratory system – two communication
blocks are highlighted in grey

Since the linearized model of the process includes only two state variables
(position and velocity of the ball, gathered in state vector x), the two-element K
gain vector is required to be used in an implementation of LQR control law, given
by the general equation 5 [5].
u  K  x T (5)
Position of ball is just multiplied by the first element of K vector. Velocity of
the ball is computed as a difference of momentary positions, filtered by a running
average filter with transfer function given by the equation 6.
N
1
G filter  z   z i
(6)
N i 0
The horizon of the filter N is set to 50 samples, due to presence of significant
disturbances in infra-red sensor measurements. These two values are summed and
then filtered again before being sent. The results of operation with two K different
values are shown in the figure 9. In the figure 9a the system operation with optimal
(among tested set) controller parameters is shown. Figure 9b presents system
operation when K vector values are too big – oscillations around reference value
are observed.

318
 K. Nowopolski / Ball –and–beam laboratory system controlled …

(a) (b)
Fig. 9. Test of LQR control strategy with two K vector values: (a) K1=[30, 5000]T,
(b) K2=[40, 7000]T

Besides the LQR control law, proportional and proportional-derivative control

algorithms were tested. As it was mentioned in section 2.1, P controller is too
simple to lead the ball to the reference position. In this control algorithm the ball
velocity is not taken into consideration. When the ball approaches the reference
position, its velocity is too big to be reduced by the small tilt of the beam.
Therefore, the control system including proportional control law remains unstable
(Fig. 10).

Fig. 10. Tests of basic control strategies: proportional control law

System operation with PD and LQR control laws are very similar (Fig. 11).
Both of these algorithms control position as well as velocity of the ball.
Application of LQR algorithm provides a second degree of freedom. It is
noticeable in step switches between reference position. The PD control algorithm
forms then impulses in output control signal, which cause additional oscillations

319
 K. Nowopolski / Ball –and–beam laboratory system controlled …

and therefore need to be filtered in further processing. Beside this disadvantage,

performances of these control laws are comparable.

Fig. 11. Tests of basic control strategies: proportional-derivative controller

5. Conclusions

The objectives of the design and research work has been reached. The
laboratory system including hardware and software parts was designed and
launched. An inexpensive platform that can be utilized for educational purpose has
been built and basic control algorithms have been tested. These algorithms can be
utilized as one the first exercises in laboratory collage course. During system
operation no problems with communication have been encountered. The main
disadvantages, i.e. slow position sensor response and limited accuracy, are related
with application of low-cost infra-red sensors.

References

[1] Marton L., Hodel A.S, Lantos B., Hung J.Y., Underactuated Robot Control:
Comparing LQR, Subspace Stabilization, and Combined Error Metric Approaches,
Transactions on Industrial Electronics (Vol. 55), p. 3724-3730, Oct. 2008.
[2] B. Messnerk, D. Tilbury, Modeling the Ball and Beam Experiment, University
of Michigan 1997.
[3] Wenzhuo Chen, Xiaomei Sui, Yonghui Xing, Modeling and Modulation of Nonlinear
Ball-beam System Controller Based on Matlab, 9th International Conference on Fuzzy
Systems and Knowledge Discovery (FSKD), p. 2388-2391, 2012.
[4] S. Ossowski, Modelowanie i symulacja układów i procesów dynamicznych, Oficyna
Wydawnicza Politechniki Warszawskiej 2007.
[5] J. Sheng, J. Renner, W. S. Levine, A Ball and Curved Offset Beam Experiment,
American Control Conference, p. 402-408, 2010.

320