Tracking control of a ball on plate system using PID controller and Lead/Lag compensator with a double loop feedback scheme

Abstract

Nowadays, technology is in continuous evolution, movement and balance control are in full expansion (humanoid robots, drones and parallel robots). The difficulty that robotics software developers are often facing is maintaining stability and balance, a robot that loses its balance is an instant threat to its environment, therefore, the ball on plate system is the best method to test the performance of a controller to ensure the balance of a given system. This platform is an upgraded version of the ball and beam system, it is a multivariable and a nonlinear system which has an underactuated feature that makes it one of the most complicated systems in terms of control, requiring reliable, efficient and fast controllers to meet the end goal of this task. In this work, two types of controllers for the ball stabilization, classical PID controller and Lead / Lag compensator in a double loop feedback scheme, were presented in order to achieve a fast and precise response with a minimal tracking error. Finally, a comparison of the results obtained by these two control techniques was made which revealed the superiority of the Lead / Lag compensator in dealing with this kind of system.