Development of Nonlinear Dynamics Simulator for 2-DOF Ball Balancing Platform to Assist Distance Learning of Control Systems

In a wide range of control applications, balance control systems are known to be one of the most crucial and challenging applications. 2-DOF ball balancing platform is an experimental platform which can perform various kinds of balance control experiments. Hence, this laboratory experiment is widely used in many control engineering courses. But with COVID-19, travel restrictions and social distancing, performing laboratory experiments have become much more challenging. Hence, this research explores the feasibility of performing control engineering experiments on Ball on plate system in a simulation environment for distance learning purposes. This paper represents the control design theory, system modelling & simulations of ball balancing platform and proposes a method of performing lab experiments for remote-learning. All the system modelling and simulations of this research were done using MATLAB Simulink based on the Simscape model developed using SolidWorks.