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Team Members

• William Brown
• Phillip Chen
• Eric Huckenpahler
• Laura Hughes
• Brian Ibeling
• Chris Johnson

Abstract

Team STABLE seeks to develop a ball-on-plate balancing system. The position and movement of the ball will be handled by a controllable plate, capable of countering accelerations and disturbances experienced upon the ball. Our team seeks to develop a system that is interactive for users, providing control of the ball through a mobile device touchscreen. With this, a user has the ability to position the ball anywhere on the plate, control the path the ball takes, and control the velocity at which it travels. This level of freedom to the user gives the our development team a wide range of potential roles the ball-on-plate balancing system can venture into. In game development, two plate systems could be set up side by side with a maze on each plate. Two teams would compete against one another to complete the maze using a touchscreen to control the motion of the ball. In another scenario, paint could be applied to the ball and a user could become an artist through interfacing and creating with our machine and their phone. The user interface is the end goal. The more ways people can interact and engage with our system, the more excited they will be about the product, and the more ways we can connect people and technology.

Method of Control

The plate will rest on a single ball bearing fixed at the center of the board. This allows for a virtually frictionless surface, providing an ideal situation for instantaneous plate motion. Two high-torque motors will control the plate. If we consider the ball bearing as the origin, the two motors will be placed at the greatest x and y axis values that exist on the board. At the motor locations, the board can be pushed or pulled with a gearing system to handle all ranges of motion in this two-dimensional system.

Keeping track of the ball's location in real time will be crucial to controlling its movement. A camera positioned above the board could allow a series of vectors to be calculated and sent to the motors to move the ball from point A or point B. Contrasting color (a black ball against a while board) can also help to more easily analyze the position and movement of the ball.

Possible Issues

Use of a camera to monitor the position and motion of the ball has the limitation of not being able to analyze the images fast enough to control the system. There are other methods to provide input to our control system, in which our requirements will determine which method will best meet our needs. Use of gears with the motors to control the plate may also prove problematic. A level of precision is needed to handle a wide range of ball velocities and accelerations, and this may be lost with the use of gears.

High-Level Requirements to Consider

The following is a list of requirements which will need to be defined and will help to guide our crucial system decisions in the next several weeks:

• The ball position shall be known at all times.
• The plate shall be controlled in two dimensions.
• The plate shall be able to counter maximum ball accelerations of _, and minimum accelerations of _.
• A user shall be able to control the position of the ball.
• The system shall be powered through a DC power supply at _ volts at _ amps