AU ball on plate balancing robot

Abstract

The ball on plate system is the extension of traditional ball on beam balancing problem in control theory. In this paper the implementation of a proportional-integral-derivative controller (PID controller) to balance a ball on a plate has been demonstrated. To increase the system response time and accuracy multiple controllers are piped through a simple custom serial protocol to boost the processing power, and overall performance. A single HD camera module is used as a sensor to detect the ball's position and two RC servo motors are used to tilt the plate to balance the ball. The result shows that by implementing multiple PUs (Processing Units) redundancy and high resolution can be achieved in real-time control systems.