This paper presents the process of designing, fabricating, assembling, programming and optimizing a prototype nonlinear mechatronic Ball-Plate System (BPS) as a laboratory platform for engineering education STEM. Due to the nonlinearity and complexity of BPS, the task presents challenges such as: (1) difficulty in controlling the stabilization of a particular position point, known as steady-state error, (2) position resolution, known as specific distance error, and (3) adverse environmental effects—light-shadow error, which is also discussed in this paper. The laboratory prototype BPS for education was designed, manufactured and installed at Karlovac University of Applied Sciences in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Mechatronics program. The low-cost two-degree BPS uses a USB HD camera for computer vision as a feedback sensor and two DC servo motors as actuators. Due to control problems, an advanced block diagram of the control system is proposed and discussed. An open-source control system based on Python scripts, which allows the use of ready-made functions from the library, allows the color of the ball and the parameters of the PID controller to be changed, indirectly simplifying the control system and performing mathematical calculations directly. The authors will continue their research on this BPS mechatronic platform and control algorithms.
This paper presents the process of designing, fabrication, assembling, programming and optimizing a prototype of a nonlinear mechatronic Ball-Plate System (BPS) as a laboratory platform for STEM engineer education. Due to the nonlinearity and complexity of BPS, task presents challenging issues, such as: 1) difficulties in controlling the stabilization of a given position point known as steady state error, 2) position resolution known as specific distance error and 3) adverse environmental effects - light shadow error, also discussed in this paper. The laboratory BPS prototype for education was designed, manufactured and installed at the Karlovac University of Applied Sciences at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Study of mechatronics. The low-cost two degrees BPS system uses a USB HD camera for computer vision as feedback and two DC servomotors as actuators. Due to controlling problems, an advanced block diagram of control system is proposed and discussed. An open-source control system based on Python scripts that allows the use of ready-made functions from the library allows changing the color of the ball and the parameters of the PID controller, thus indirectly simplifying control system and directly the mathematical calculation. The authors will continue their research on this BPS mechatronic platform and control algorithms.
This paper presents an approach to a go-kart chassis design, vehicle dynamics calculation, Li-ion battery capacity analysis, and electric motor choice for optimized vehicle performance. The chassis analysis shown in this paper was performed by a CAD/FEA software package, SolidWorks. Three highlights can be found in this paper: 1) an original design was implemented; the basic analysis was composed of chassis optimization using beam elements and modeling such an optimized chassis “locally” with solid elements for sub-modeling purposes. 2) The most stressed tube joint was sub-modeled to calculate the risk of tube wall stability. 3) Vehicle dynamics were calculated for the case of braking in a curved path and the case of a collision with the front tire on road imperfection. The authors intend to install a data acquisition system in the future to analyze the stress of local chassis tubes. The results of the SolidWorks analysis indicate a safety design of the chassis concept. The result for the sub-model stability (buckling) analysis show that the chosen tube wall thickness to diameter gives safety factor values ranging from 1.6 to 5.0. Based on the stress distribution, some improvement in the middle part of the chassis can be made from a half-a-millimeter thicker wall tube, or a larger diameter of the tube, by a few millimeters, to lower the stress. The latter will be described in the following paper.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.