A Novel Cart/Pendulum System for Teaching Dynamic Systems and Feedback Control.

This paper presents a novel cart/pendulum system for teaching dynamic systems and feedback control and discusses the use of the system in a class project. The cart has a pendulum attached to it that can be used for vibration suppression control in the downward position or for stabilizing the inverted pendulum in the upward position. A line sensor is attached to the front of the cart for line following. The cart/pendulum system has been designed to perform three different experiments. The cart is controlled using the combination of a Raspberry Pi and two Arduinos. Students program their control logic in Python. The class project is to program the robot to compete in three different events in a robot triathlon. The first event involves vibration suppression of the pendulum after it is given an initial flick (disturbance). The second event consists of racing around an oval line-following track while suppressing the vibrations with the pendulum in the downward (stable) position. The third event is to see how long the robot can balance the pendulum in the inverted (unstable) position. Student learning is assessed using final project reports, exam questions, and a comparison of student evaluation comments between this year and last year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]