PC60 Inverted Pendulum

The laboratory experimental setup “Inverted Pendulum” contains the technical realization of an unstable plant together with an actuator and a digital controller. The digital controller realizes an observer based state feedback controller. The laboratory setup is based on the plant “Position Control PC60”.

The basic system includes an actuator as well as the mechanical setup (PC60) with a premounted pendulum extension kit (Option 60-20). The plant is represented by a revolving pendulum mounted on top of a moving base. By a three-phase synchronous drive, a toothed wheel, a toothed belt and a clutch, the moving base can be driven along a guiding bar over a length of approximately 1.5m such that the pendulum is stabilized in upright position at a preassigned position. The stabilization of the pendulum is accomplished by a digital controller. Based on measurements, the controller generates a suitable signal which controls the integrated electronics of the synchronous drive. The measurements are the pendulum angle and the cart position obtained by incremental encoders. The documentation includes sections for assembly and start-up, the technical data, the program operation, the theoretical background with the mathematical model of the plant, practical instructions as well as solutions of the experiments.

The standard digital control of the basic system consists of the PC adapter card MF634 Option 60-03 and an executable controller program (MS-Windows) Option 60-22. The adapter card as well as the program require a PC with PCIe slot.

The "Practical Program" (WINDOWS 7-10) is driven by pull-down menus. The control algorithm realizes a state feedback with estimation of the angular speed of the pendulum and the speed of the cart as well as a disturbance observer to compensate the effects of the friction. The friction compensation force acts on the bearing of the cart. All of the controller and observer parameters are comfortable adjustable. The controller performance is examined by recording the measurements and observed signals of the system.

The graphic output of recorded data may be sent to a window. Its content may be printed, saved as a WMF file or copied into the clipboard.

Thus, the basic system with the standard digital controller is suitable as a laboratory experiment in student practicals of automatic control.

Additional options extend the version of the laboratory setup described above to support research studies in the field of arbitrary control algorithms or applied fault detection methods. For this purpose ‘C++’ source files of the program are available.

By means of the PC plug-in card MF634 of Humusoft the laboratory experiment "PC60 Inverted Pendulum" can easily be integrated in Matlab/Simulink with real-time environment. The user now has the opportunity to test its own controller designs under Matlab/Simulink.

The Option 60-25 contains the C++ source files of the PC controller program including library functions for graphic output, controlling the sampling period as well as controlling the PC adapter card. With this option the user is able to implement special algorithms for control, supervision or fault detection in the frame of the menu-driven program. The Embarcadero C++ Builder V10 is required to generate an executable program.

Technical data are subject to change (Date 4-December-2017)