Control of a Beam and Ball System with Arbitrarily Shaped Smooth Beams

Abstract

This thesis develops a general model for the problem of controlling a ball on a curved beam for any beam defined by y = f(x). The model is converted to dimensionless parameters and simulated. The performance of LQR with a model for the motor in the controls lab at the University of Maryland College Park is studied and a different nonlinear control method is investigated. The effects of feedback delay and increased sampling interval are studied.