Full-State Feedback Controller
Reference Input

The state-space representation of the ball and beam example is given below:

Remember, unlike the previous examples where we controlled the gear's angle to control the beam and ball, here we are controlling alpha-doubledot. By doing this we are essentially controlling a torque applied at the center of the beam by a motor. Therefore, we do not need a gear and lever system.

The design criteria for this problem are:

• Settling time less than 3 seconds
• Overshoot less than 5%

To see the derivation of the state-space equations for this problem refer to the ball and beam modeling page.

If you are interested in running an animation of this example based on the control techniques used in the state-space tutorial please go to the Ball & Beam Animation Page after completing this tutorial.

Full-State Feedback Controller

Recall, that the characteristic polynomial for this closed-loop system is the determinant of (sI-(A-BK)), where s is the Laplace variable. For our system the A and B*K matrices are both 4x4. Hence, there should be four poles for our system. In designing our full-state feedback controller we can move these poles anywhere we want.

For our design we desire an overshoot of less than 5% which corresponds to a zeta of 0.7 (please refer to your textbook for the relationship between overshoot and damping ratio). On a root locus this criterion is represented as a 45 degree line emanating from the origin and extending out into the left-half plane. We want to place our poles on or beneath this line. Our next criterion is a settling time less than 3 seconds, which corresponds to a sigma = 4.6/Ts = 4.6/3 = 1.53, represented by a vertical line at -1.53 on the root locus. Anything beyond this line in the left-half plane is a suitable place for our poles. Therefore we will place our poles at -2+2i and -2-2i. We will place the other poles far to the left for now, so that they will not affect the response too much. To start with place them at -20 and -80. Now that we have our poles we can use Matlab to find the controller (K matrix) by using the place command. Copy the following code to an m-file to model the system and find the K matrix:

m = 0.111;
R = 0.015;
g = -9.8;
J = 9.99e-6;

H = -m*g/(J/(R^2)+m);
   
A=[0 1 0 0
   0 0 H 0
   0 0 0 1
   0 0 0 0];
B=[0;0;0;1];
C=[1 0 0 0];
D=[0];

p1=-2+2i;
p2=-2-2i;
p3=-20;
p4=-80;

K=place(A,B,[p1,p2,p3,p4])

place: ndigits= 15
 
K =
 
   1.0e+03 *
 
    1.8286    1.0286    2.0080    0.1040

We can now simulate the closed-loop response to a 0.25m step input by using the lsim command. Add the following to your m-file:

T = 0:0.01:5;                  
U = 0.25*ones(size(T));             
[Y,X]=lsim(A-B*K,B,C,D,U,T);     
plot(T,Y) 

From this plot we see that there is a large steady state error for which we will need to add reference input (explained in next section). However, the overshoot and settling time criteria are met. If we wanted to reduce the overshoot further than we would make the imaginary part of the pole smaller than the real part. Also, if we wanted a faster settling time we would move the poles further in the left-half plane. Feel free to experiment with the pole positions to see these trends.

Reference Input

Nbar can be found using the user-defined function rscale (copy it to the directory that your m-file is in). Copy the following to your m-file and run it to view the step response with Nbar added.

Nbar=rscale(A,B,C,D,K)

T = 0:0.01:5;                  
U = 0.25*ones(size(T));             
[Y,X]=lsim(A-B*K,B*Nbar,C,D,U,T);     
plot(T,Y)

Your output should be:

place: ndigits= 15
 
Nbar =
 
   1.8286e+03

Now the steady-state error is gone and all the design criteria are satisfied.

Note: A design problem does not necessarily have a unique answer. Using this method (or any other) may result in many different compensators. For practice you may want to go back and try to change the pole positions to see how the system responds.

If you are interested in running an animation of the ball & beam example based on the control techniques used in this tutorial please go to the Ball & Beam Animation Page.

State-space Examples

Cruise Control | Motor Speed | Motor Position | Bus Suspension | Inverted Pendulum | Pitch Controller | Ball & Beam

Ball & Beam Examples

Modeling | PID | Root Locus | Frequency Response | State Space | Digital Control | Animation

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