QIZHAN TAM
qtam (at) stanford.edu
Fall, 2015
Automatic Ball-Balancing
The objective is to balance the ping-pong ball at different points along the rail by using a PID controller. I used a camera to capture and computer vision to track the position of the ball. The kinetics of the ball’s motion was also modelled and translated into the PID parameters as a starting point before being optimized through experiments.
AUTOMATIC
The positions and timing of the ball along the rail are predetermined. The PID controller balances the ball at the various positions
SEMI-AUTOMATIC
The joystick controls the timing and order of the predetermined positions.
MANUAL
The joystick has complete control of the ball's exact position of along the rail while the PID controller balances the ball at the positions specified by the joystick.