1

Dual-motor ball-beam setup

Design, development, and control
Manavaalan Gunasekaran and Ramprasad Potluri

I. I NTRODUCTION In the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Kanpur, we founded a new laboratory in the summer of 2007 devoted to the study of networked control systems (NCS), a new area for us. We wished to devote the laboratory to practical applications of control theory that would have a positive effect on the life of the common man. We had two competing models for the experimental setups that we could have in this laboratory off-the-shelf (OTS) and build your own (BYO) (the abbreviations are from [1]). The advantages of each type of setup have been described in detail in [1]. Our considerations in going the BYO way were as follows: 1. Desire to build a commercially-viable product. We wished to carry our development all the way through to a prototype that could be commercialized. This meant that the product have only those features that are needed by the end user. An OTS setup usually has many features that we pay for but do not use. Thus, by using an OTS setup and developing our algorithms around it, we may develop a false estimate of the cost of our control application. We may obtain a better estimate by developing the product on our own using only those building blocks that we need. 2. Nature of product prevents outsourcing. Even if we have the option of outsourcing building of the hardware, when the application has multiple control loops that have to be congured one after the other, the development of the hardware has to go hand in hand with the development of the control algorithm. This means that we need to perform a hardware-algorithm co-design. Thus, we concluded that BYO was the way to go to build a prototype of a practically useful application. 3. Time constraints. The problems we wished to study needed to determine the experimental setups that we would have. We would identify the problems in collaboration with our graduate students. Thus, the sequence of steps would be: provide graduate students lab/ofce space, identify problems with them, acquire the setups. At the time we had funds, we were at the rst step, and the funds needed to be spent within a few months. So, we could not commit our available funds to any particular setup at that time. Instead, we decided to invest in basic building blocks such as motors, gears, encoders, components, and a few eZdspTM kits. We would use these building blocks to build our own setups once the second step was complete. 4. Versatility desired from the lab. We wanted the NCS laboratory to quickly become conversant in the hardware that is needed to build control systems, instead of conning itself to the plane of algorithm-development. We wanted it

to be a resource center in all aspects of whatever control systems we developed (the following advice from [1] was an important inspiration towards this goal: Get yourself a good control processor with reliable software, build yourself a simple plant, collect some data to identify the system, and close some loops. Youll never look back.). 5. Our capabilities. We had a Ph.D. student (Manavaalan) who was more eager towards hardware than towards algorithms. We felt that the easiest way to warm him to algorithms would be to have him build something that he would have to make work through suitable control algorithms. Multi-agent coordination combines communication networks with control systems. We were able to visualize several practically useful applications in this area. Thus, we decided that this would broadly be the focus area of the NCS laboratory. Before attempting to build these practically useful applications, in order to gain experience with hardware algorithm co-design we decided to build a simpler setup that would help easily visualize human-like coordination such as when two humans hold a table at opposite ends and try to carry it through a door. A dual-motor ball and beam (DMBB) system struck us as such a setup. The single-motor ball and beam (SMBB) system, simply called ball and beam system in the literature, has been a testbed for control algorithms in numerous research articles. There are two variants of the SMBB system: 1. One end of the beam is hinged to a xed base, while the other end is driven by a motor. 2. The beam pivots on the motor shaft that is located at the beams center of gravity. In contrast to the SMBB, in our DMBB system, each end of the beam is driven by a motor. Such a setup can serve as a learning stage, for example, for the more difcult dualmanipulator cooperative control task (for example, [2], [3]), and for the more general multi-agent cooperative control (for example, [4]). In general, a cooperative control system comprises multiple subsystems that share information or tasks to accomplish an objective that is common to them [5]. In the DMBB setup, we can identify the following three subsystems: ball position subsystem, motor-1 subsystem, and motor-2 subsystem. In the present work, as a rst step, we implement the three subsystems using a single processor, instead of using three separate processors with inter-processor communication. DMBB setups have been reported by two other sources: [6] and [7]. In contrast to them, we explain the details of the construction of our DMBB setup. We hope that these details will be useful to anyone that wishes to build such a setup.

Fig. 1.

The dual-motor ball and beam system.

In the following sections, we describe the equipment that went into building our DMBB setup, and modeling and control of this setup. We compare the expected and actual results, list the mismatches between the results, explain the differences, and report the improvements. We list the lessons that we learned from our exercise of building and operating the DMBB testbed that we could not have learned from a purely simulation-based study of the control strategies. Throughout this article, all physical quantities are in SI units. II. B UILDING THE DMBB SYSTEM A. The DMBB mechanism We fabricated the mechanical portion of the DMBB system in our departmental workshop. The DMBB system is shown in Figure 1. It comprises a steel ball rolling on top of a rail that is 0.5 m in length. The rail is made up of two parallel bars one of negligibly low resistance (a steel rod in our case), and the other of a much larger resistance. We built the latter from a 0.25 mm nichrome wire that runs along the entire length of a plexiglass rod. A voltage is applied to the ends of the steel rod. As the ball rolls on the rail, it contacts the steel rod

and the nichrome wire, forming a voltage divider as shown in Figure 2. This voltage divider is used to sense the location of the ball on the beam. Each end of the beam hangs from an arm. The arm hangs from a spur gear. The spur gear is mounted on the shaft of each of two planetary gears. Each planetary gear is mounted on the shaft of each of the two brushed DC servomotors. This entire conguration is shown in Figure 3. We restrict in software the output shaft of each of the planetary gears to rotate through 90 . We sense the angular displacement of each spur gear using a potentiometer as shown in Figure 3. Each potentiometer is of 10 k, and is powered by a 3.3 V supply. B. Summary of equipment used We use the following equipment: 1. Spectrum Digitals eZDSP kit for Texas Instruments DSP TMS320F2812. Though this DSP is an overkill for our application, we use this DSP as it comes as part of a convenient-to-use package called the eZDSP kit. We may reuse this kit in other applications that may place greater requirements on the processor.

Vin steel rod

TMS320F2812

nichrome wire ball

PWM Direction ADC

4 Amplier

4 2Q H-bridge Motor1

Instrumentation amp.

Vout

Fig. 4. Block diagram of the DMBB system. 1 and 2 are the angular displacements of the left and right spur gears respectively. x is the displacement of the ball on the beam. The amplier boosts the voltage output by the PWM module from 3 V to 9.5 V.

Planetary gear
revird TEFSOM ) 0 1 1 2 RI(

Arm Potentiometer Spur gear

Fig. 3.

Fig. 5. The 2-quadrant H-bridge circuit (2Q H-bridge). SDF (stands for shut down forward) and SDR (stands for shut down reverse are the direction control signals.

Ball

Plexi glass rod

Nichrome wire

Top view of the DMBB system.

2. A potentiometer to sense the position of each DC motor. 3. Maxons motor units containing permanent magnet DC servomotors (ratings: 24 V, 11 W, 0.0172 Nm) and planetary gears (gear ratio 62 : 1, 3-Stage). In selecting the motor units, we had the following consideration. First, we estimated that each end of the beam requires a continuous torque of at least 0.1 Nm. Second, the motor units would be reused in other applications that would not need more than 10 W of power. 4. MOSFETs IRF540, and MOSFET driver IR2110 to realize an H-bridge circuit. We use a pulse width modulated (PWM) amplier, realized as an H-bridge circuit that we built, to drive the DC motor. We could generate the desired DC voltage of variable magnitude for the DC motor using a high power operational amplier or transistor. The advantage of our design is that the H-bridge circuit can be used in future for four quadrant operation of the DC motor. Thus, an H-bridge is more efcient than a linear amplier. 5. Op-amps, resistors, capacitors, diodes. 6. The ball-beam mechanism fabricated in our departments workshop. 7. We reported the DMBB setup earlier in [8]. Since then, we have made a few enhancements. One is that we now have an instrumentation amplier to boost the voltage Vout of Figure 2 upto 2.5 V while rejecting common mode noise.

The overall cost of our DMBB setup is about USD 1200.00 including fabrication. This price does not include the cost of manpower. This price can be reduced by another USD 200.00 if we replace the eZDSP kit with a dsPIC-based microcontroller board that we designed, fabricated, and extensively tested in our lab.

C. Digital control of DC motor Figure 4 shows how the various components described in the previous paragraph are used for the digital control. The DSP computes a control signal based on its setpoint and feedback signals. A PWM signal proportional to the control signal is output from the DSP to a two-quadrant DC chopper (implemented as an H-bridge, shown in Figure 5) which supplies a DC voltage of the required magnitude to the armature of each DC motor. The switching time of each MOSFET in the H-bridge is of the order of s. Therefore, during the transition from one direction of rotation of the motor to the other, each arm of the H-bridge may potentially short-circuit the DC voltage source. To avoid this shorting, two PWM signals, that are 180 out of phase with respect to each other, are used for each motor one to run the motor in clockwise direction, and the other to run it in the counter-clockwise direction. A direction control signal is used to enable the appropriate MOSFET driver of the DC chopper, as shown in Figure 5. The position of the ball is sensed using the voltage divider. The angular displacement of each motor units shaft is sensed using a potentiometer which is attached to the shaft as shown in Figure 3 via an external spur gear of ratio 150 : 90.

DNG

Steel rod

) 0 1 1 2 RI(

R M WP

R DS

F M WP

Brushed dc motor

V42+

Fig. 2. The voltage divider. Vin = 0.5 V. End-to-end resistance of the nichrome wire is 48 .
F DS

Ball-beam

PWM Direction

4 Amplier

4 2Q H-bridge Motor1

revird TEFSOM

mg

-45o

45o

Fig. 6.

Free body diagram of the ball-beam mechanism.

Fig. 7. Sign convention for i : i is positive for motor Mi in the direction shown.

III. M ODELING AND CONTROL OF THE DMBB SYSTEM The control task is to automatically regulate the position of the ball by suitably adjusting the slope of the beam using the motors. The DMBB and SMBB systems are open-loop unstable because the ball does not stay in any desired position on the beam when the beam is tilted and no control effort is applied. The DMBB system resembles two SMBB systems working together such that the net slope of the beam is the sum of the angles contributed by the individual motors. Therefore, a starting point for developing control strategies for the DMBB system may be the work that exists for the SMBB systems. In most of the literature, the SMBB system has been approximated by a linear model, and various linear, nonlinear, fuzzy, neuro-fuzzy, and other strategies have been applied to it (for example, [9], [10], [11]). Nonlinear models too exist for the SMBB system (for example, [12]), and are more accurate. In our work, we have adopted a linear model. We control each motors angular position using a PD controller, while we try various controllers for the ball position control. A. Physics-based model The basic mathematical description of this system comprises the DC motor dynamics and the ball-beam model. 1) DC motor dynamics: For each motor unit, the transfer function (TF) from the armature voltage Ei to the angular displacement i of the shaft is Km i (s) = , i = 1, 2, Ei (s) s(m s + 1) (1)

Fig. 8.

Diagram to understand the relation between i and

to oppose the motion of the ball relative to the beam. Here, is the coefcient of static friction between the ball and the beam, and N = mg cos is the normal reaction of the beam to the force mg cos applied by the ball (g is the acceleration due to gravity). The force F applies a torque F r on the ball that causes the ball to roll with angular velocity = whose rate of change is related to F r as follows: J d = Fr dt (2)

By Newtons second law the sum of all the forces acting on the ball accelerates the ball as per the following equation: ma = mg sin F (3)

Assuming that the ball rolls without slipping (pure rolling condition: x = r), the acceleration of its center of mass x is related to the angular acceleration of the ball as follows: x = r (4)

where, Km is the motor gain constant and m is the motor time constant in seconds KT Ra J Km = , m = (Ra B + KT Kb )Rg Ra B + KT Kb Here, KT is the torque constant in N-m/A, Ra is the armature resistance in ohms, B is the viscous-friction coefcient of the motor rotor with attached mechanical load in N-m/(rad/sec), J is the moment of inertia of the motor rotor with attached mechanical load kg-m2 , Rg = 62 is the planetary gears ratio, Kb is the back emf constant in V/(rad/sec). We calculate Km and m using Maxons data sheets. Armature inductance (La = 0.7 mH) is small enough to be negligible. 2) Ball-beam dynamics: The ball-beam dynamics are the relation between the beam angle and ball position x. These dynamics can be understood as follows using the free body diagram of the ball-beam mechanism shown in Figure 6. As the ball (of mass m and radius r) is let loose on the inclined beam, a force of friction F = N comes into play

Solving these equations to bring out the connection between and x, and working with small values of , we obtain X(s) 5g 1 = ( 2) (s) 7 s (5)

Here X(s) = L{x(t)} and (s) = L{(t)}, are the Laplace transforms of x(t) and (t). 3) Relating ball-beam dynamics to DC motor dynamics: The sign convention for i for each motor is as shown in Figure 7. The relationship between and i can be derived from Figure 8 with l L as follows: Case(i): If only one motor acts at a time, then L i l. Case(ii): If both motors act at the same time, then L 2 1 +2 l. 2 For convenience, denote := 1 + 2 . Then the approximated relationship between and is l = L (6)

L/2

mg sin

45o

-45o
o

M1

0o
2

M2

G(s)

Fig. 9. Model of the dual motor ball and beam system with controllers. Each motor module comprises a PWM module, an amplier, a 2Q H-bridge, and a motor as shown in Figure 4.

0.5 0.45 0.4 0.35 Ball Position (m) 0.3 0.25 0.2 0.15 0.1 0.05 0 0 Simulation Practical

2.
2 4 6 8 10 12 Time (sec) 14 16 18 20

Fig. 10. Simulation and practical results with the controller designed using the physics-based model with xd = 0.25 m and = 0.5 [8].

3. Using equations (5) and (6), the TF between the ball position x and angle is given by: G(s) = X(s) 5gl 1 = (s) 7L s2 (7) 5. 4.

Equations (1) and (7) may be used to design feedback controllers that will work in the control system structure shown in Figure 9. We then use bilinear transformation to discretize these controllers. 4) How good is our physics-based model for control?: In the work that we did in [8], we designed PD controllers for the motor subsystems and lead compensator for the ball position subsystem using the physics-based model. We conducted multiple redesigns of the controllers until we obtained best possible results. We observed a signicant mismatch between the simulation and practical results as shown in Figure 10. This, we decided, may be due to the following factors: 1. The feedback signals contain noise. We concluded this as follows. In Code Composer Studio (the integrated develop-

ment environment for the eZDSP kit), we observed that the rst three least signicant bits (LSBs) of the value in the 12-bit ADCs register changed much faster than the rate at which the ball moved on the beam or the spur gears turned. As the feedback signal of the ball position is in the range [0, 0.5] V, therefore for a 1 mm change in ball position the corresponding change in voltage is 1 mV. Given that the maximum decimal number 212 1 that is represented by the 12 bits corresponds to an input of 3 V to the ADC, the change in the three LSBs of the ADCs value corresponds roughly to 5 mV error in the actual value. As EMI noise is known to be in the mV range, we concluded that this rapid change was due to EMI from other equipment in our lab. Even after we reduced the noise mentioned in item 1 above as described in 1 of the next subsubsection, the practical response was signicantly non-smooth (see Figure 10). We attributed this non-smoothness to another kind of noise: that due to the improper contact between the ball and the beam, and possibly improper contact within the potentiometer. We had neglected the presence and effect of the H-bridge circuit in the TF of Equation (1). We had neglected the effects of nonlinearities such as dead zones and saturation that are inherent to the H-bridge circuit and the motors. We had neglected backlash effects that may be present in our spur gears and any nonlinearities that are present in the DMBB mechanism.

B. Measures to reduce the mismatch In the present work, we try to reduce this mismatch mentioned in the previous subsection in the following ways: 1. To take care of item 1, with a view to smooth the change in the three LSBs of the ADCs value, in each system sampling interval (Ts = 0.01 s), we obtain eight samples from the ADC and compute their average. 2. Even though we take the average of the past 8 digital values as explained in the previous item, yet the feedback has the noise discussed item 2 in the previous subsection.

Motor-2 Controller

Motor Module-2

metsysb us 2-rotoM

_+

d2

)-1(

Ball Position Controller

metsysb us 1-rotoM
_ +

d1

Motor-1 Controller

Motor Module-1

noitisop llaB metsysbus +

dx

Thus, the technique of averaging is not yielding signicant benets. Therefore, we try another method: we use an instrumentation amplier to boost the voltage Vout of Figure 2 upto 2.5 V from the earlier maximum of 0.5 V. This improves the resolution of the ball-position sensing ve times. The instrumentation amplier also rejects the common mode noise such as EMI. 3. Further, to remove the noise that the instrumentation amplier admitted, we add in software a low-pass lter. The TF of the lter is h Xo (s) = Xi (s) (s + h ) where the cut-off frequency h is at least twice the desired closed-loop bandwidth. As we want our ball to settle in tsb = 3 s, the desired closed-loop bandwidth for the outer loop works out to gb 5/tsb = 1.7 rad/s. We choose hb = 5 rad/sec for the ball position feedback. Similarly, we want the motor subsystems to settle in tsm = 0.5 s, leading to gm 5/tsm = 10 rad/s. Therefore, we choose hm = 30 rad/sec for the motor shaft position feedback. We obtain the discrete-time version of this TF by using 2 bilinear transformation s = Ts ( z1 ) with system sampling z+1 time Ts : af (1 + z 1 ) Xo (z) = Xi (z) 1 + bf z 1
Ts where af = Ts +2 and bf = Ts 2 . We obtain the Ts +2 time-domain input-output relationship in the form of the following difference equation by taking the inverse ztransform:

where 4 (y(k) 2y(k 1) + y(k 2)) Ts 2 u(k) + 2u(k 1) + u(k 2) 2 Ts (y(k) y(k 2)) n = (y(k) + 2y(k 1) + y(k 2)) yn =

(9)

Using Least Squares Estimation [13] the best estimate of may be obtained as follows: = (T )1 T Y with Y = [ yn and = [ n yn+1 n+1 ... ... yN ]T N ]T

xo (k) = af (xi (k) + xi (k 1)) bf xo (k 1) 4. To take care of items 3, 4, and 5, we determine the openloop TF from the output of the controller (in the DSP) of the DC motor Mi to the displacement i using system identication techniques as described in the following subsection. C. System Identication We rst outline the system identication technique that we wish to use here. Then, we will apply it to identifying the motor dynamics, and the ball-beam dynamics. 1) The system identication technique: Consider the following second order TF: Y (s) K = 2 U (s) s + as + b (8)

The vector to be estimated is = ( K a b )T . We will estimate it using the set of observed outputs and applied inputs [y(0), y(1), ...., y(N ), u(0), u(1), ...., u(N )]. By using bilinear 2 transformation s = Ts ( z1 ) with sampling time Ts , from z+1 Equation (8), the TF in z-domain is Y (z) = U (z) (z 2 + 2z + 1)K 4 2 (z 2 2z + 1) + Ts (z 2 1)a + (z 2 + 2z + 1)b Ts 2

We obtain the following discrete equation via inverse ztransform for n = 2, 3, ...., N and k = n: yn = T n

Next, we wish to perform system identication for each motors dynamics and the ball-beam dynamics. 2) Identifying the motor dynamics: We use system identication to determine the transfer function from vi (t) the voltage applied to the i-th motor module to the displacement i . Equation (1) represents the general form of TF of the DC K servomotor. Thus, consider the TF Vi (s) = s(s+a) . Here, i (s) Vi (s) = L{vi (t)}. Plugging b = 0 in Equation (8), the parameter vector becomes = ( K a )T . Then, n is a 2 1 matrix (the third row of n of Equation (9) is absent here as b = 0). We apply a series of voltages to the armature of the DC motor, and measure using the potentiometer the angular displacement that each of these voltages causes. In this manner, we collect 15 different data sets per motor subsystem (examples are shown in Figure 11). Each set contains 250 input data and 250 output data samples with the sampling time Ts = 0.01 s. We observe that the computed parameter vector is not always constant (a [1.5, 2] and K [7.2, 7.8]). We take the average of these values. Thus, the identied model for the DC servo motor unit is i (s) 7.5 = (10) Vi (s) s(s + 1.8) whereas, the TF obtained from physics-based modeling using (s) 40 data from Maxons catalog is E(s) = s(s+63) . 3) Identifying the ball-beam dynamics: The approximate TF of the ball-beam from = 1 + 2 to the ball position is shown in Equation (7). We assume that, in general, the TF is of the form shown in Equation (8) with as the input and the ball position x as the output. The signals used for identication of the ball-beam system are shown in Figure 12. We collect the data at sampling interval Ts = 0.01 s. The identied TF from to x is 0.19 X(s) = 2 (11) (s) s + 0.08s 0.014 The length of the beam L = 0.5 m and the length of each arm l = 0.025 m. Using these values in Equation (7), the physics-based model for the ball-beam is a double integrator with gain 0.35. In comparison, the identied model has a gain of approximately half that of the physics-based model, and with poles that are very close to the origin instead of being at the origin. In the remainder of this article, we will work with the model of equations (10) and (11).

1 vi x10 (Volt) and i (Rad) vi x10 (Volt) and i (Rad)

1.5 1 0.5 0 -0.5 -1 0 0.5 1 1.5 Time (Se) 2

vi i

1.4

1
2

0.5

1.2

Simulation

-0.5

vi i

0.5

1 1.5 Time (Se)

2.5

2.5

1 & 2 (Rad)

-1

-1.5

0.8

1.5 vi vi x10 (Volt) and i (Rad) i vi x10 (Volt) and i (Rad) 1 0.5 0 -0.5 -1 -1.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 Time (Se) 2 2.5

2 vi 1 i

0.6

0.4
0

0.2
-1

-2

0.5

1 1.5 Time (Se)

2.5

0 0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1
Time (Sec)

1.2

1.4

1.6

1.8

Fig. 11. Input and output signals for identication of motor system. vi is the input to the i-th motor module and i is the corresponding response of this module.
0.8

Fig. 13. Output of motor unit Mi with PD controller for a reference input id = 1 rad.

0.6

1, 2 (Rad) and ball positon (m)

0.4

0.2

-0.2 1 2 x -0.6 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 Time (Sec) 3 3.5 4 4.5 5

-0.4

Fig. 12. Input and output signals for identication of ball-beam system. To collect the x data, we actuate both motor subsystems simultaneously by applying id to the i-th motor subsystem. The ball position subsystem is in open-loop mode.

D. Controller design and implementation The feedback control system for the DMBB setup shown in Figure 9 contains two inner loops and one outer loop. All settling time specications are with respect to a steady state error of 5%. 1) Control of the inner loops: The inner loop tracks id . The angles id are restricted in software to the interval [0.7857, 0.7857] rad. We know a priori that a PD controller (Kd s + Kp ) is good for motor position control. The unity feedback closed-loop system built around each DC motor will be type-1, and the PD controller will reduce overshoots in the step response of this closed-loop system. Therefore, we will use only a PD controller for each of the inner loops. The specications for the PD controller are settling time ts 0.5 s and peak overshoot Mp 15%. For the design we use algebraic techniques so that the closed-loop TF is a standard second order one. Hence the resultant controller is

1.89s + 14.42. We use bilinear transformation to convert the controller into a discrete-time one. The simulation and the practical closed-loop responses are shown in Figure 13. 2) Control of the outer loop: The ball position controller in the outer loop computes the required d that needs to be shared by the two motors in a cooperate manner. If one motor contributes a fraction d (0 1), then the other motor needs to contribute the remainder (1 )d as shown in Figure 9. We try various controllers including PD, lead, PID, and integral control with LQR. We obtain satisfactory results from all these controllers. In the remainder of this section, we will further investigate the PD controller only (the choice is arbitrary). The specications for the PD controller are settling time ts 3 s and peak overshoot Mp 20%. The designed controller is 13s + 17.5. The practical output of the DMBB system with this PD controller is shown in Figure 14 for the following arbitrary choices of : 1. plot 1 is observed with = 1, 2. plot 2 is observed with = 0.5, and 3. plot 3 is observed with 0.5, 0 t < 1 s 0.75, 1 t < 2 s = 0.5, 2 t < 3 s 1, 3t s 3) Analysis of the results: 1. Effect of : In Figure 14, the three plots (corresponding to the three different values of (t)) seem to be approximately the same. The seemingly small differences may be attributed to the small differences that may exist in the conditions under which the three experiments were performed. Theoretically, should the three values of (t) give the same results? Or, should we expect that two motors may do a quicker or more accurate job of positioning the ball than a single motor?

8
0.4 1 2 3

0.35

0.3

Ball position (m)

0.25

0.2

0.15

0.1

5. We conducted our experimental work by simultaneously designing (and simulating) the controller as well as implementing it on the actual system. The fact that the control system of our DMBB contained two loops the inner motor angular position control loop, and the outer ball position control loop required us to design and test the outer loop only after the inner loop worked satisfactorily not just in simulation, but also in actuality. 6. While we agree with almost all the lessons listed in [14], the one that stands out with respect to our work is the following: An ounce of identication is worth 10 pounds of modeling. V. C ONCLUSIONS AND DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE

0.05

0 0

5 Time (Sec)

10

RESEARCH

Fig. 14. Practical results for the ball position with xd = 0.25 m. Each plot is one value of (t).

In Figure 9, if the section of the block diagram between d and is of unity gain, then we see that the behavior of x will be independent of (t), and all three plots in Figure 14 will be the same. That is, two motors will not do a quicker or more accurate job of positioning the ball than a single motor. The differences among these three plots will arise when does not have unity gain, and contains nonlinearities, as it does in our case. If d or (1 )d are in the saturation regions of their respective nonlinearities, then we may expect to nd difference among the three plots. This may happen, for example, in the case where we provide xd 0.25 m. 2. Effect of our measures: A comparison of Figure 14 with Figure 10 shows that our measures for reducing the mismatch mentioned earlier have paid off. IV. C ONTROL - THEORETIC LESSONS LEARNED 1. Through a BYO testbed, one can learn to use the right hardware for putting ones control algorithms to practical use. For example, the data sheets of the op-amps LM741 and uA741 assure of a minimum bandwidth of 400 kHz, but in our experience they had bandwidths of only about 15 20 kHz and did not allow us to work with a PWM frequency of 20 kHz. Thus, these did not support our theoretically-proven algorithm. Instead, we found that the op-amp TL074N allowed us to work at a PWM frequency of 20 kHz, and thus was adequate for our purpose. 2. In case of failure of the BYO testbed, one can quickly perform repairs oneself, instead of waiting for the vendor. 3. If the needed testbed is not available as an OTS one, then a BYO is the only option, as, for example, in the case of our DMBB setup. 4. A BYO setup can always be modied to accommodate newer tasks or functionality. An OTS setup may not permit modications.

In this article, we described a DMBB setup that we built, and demonstrated the coordination of two motors to achieve a task. The results are an improvement over our earlier tests. We used identied linear models for designing controllers. The practical results met our requirements. One control strategy we plan to test is that of cooperation through information exchange by assigning one controller (DSP) to each motor, and having the two controllers exchange information through a communication network that uses, for example, the controller area network (CAN) protocol. This experiment will be in line with the goals of the NCS laboratory. Using the motor control experience gained in the course of building the DMBB setup, during the Fall 2009 semester, we oated six new experiments in a third year undergraduate laboratory course (EE380) in Electrical Engineering at IIT Kanpur. We will report the experience of developing and implementing these experiments in another article. With the condence and experience gathered through building and controlling the DMBB setup, we are currently working on the problem of coordinating the multiple driving and steering motors of a lunar rover so that this rover may follow the desired path with minimum of slip and power consumption. R EFERENCES
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