Low cost experiment for control systems

Abstract

The usefulness of the balls-in-tubes experiment as a platform for research and education in traditional and advanced control systems is discussed. A re-design of an original experiment is presented, including its principal characteristics. Physical theoretical issues and a dynamical model of the system are analyzed. A study case using traditional PID control applied to a SISO system in the balls-in tubes is illustrated. Moreover, a fuzzy logic control algorithm is implemented for the whole system showing the possibilities of implementing different type of algorithms in a low cost experiment.