Fast Real-Time Model Predictive Control for a Ball-on-Plate Process

Krzysztof Zarzycki; Maciej Ławryńczuk

doi:10.3390/s21123959

Fast Real-Time Model Predictive Control for a Ball-on-Plate Process

Sensors (Basel). 2021 Jun 8;21(12):3959. doi: 10.3390/s21123959.

Authors

Krzysztof Zarzycki¹, Maciej Ławryńczuk¹

Affiliation

¹ Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology, Institute of Control and Computation Engineering, Warsaw University of Technology, ul. Nowowiejska 15/19, 00-665 Warsaw, Poland.

Abstract

This work is concerned with an original ball-on-plate laboratory process. First, a simplified process model based on state-space process description is derived. Next, a fast state-space MPC algorithm is discussed. Its main advantage is computational simplicity: the manipulated variables are found on-line using explicit formulas with parameters calculated off-line; no real-time optimization is necessary. Software and hardware implementation details of the considered MPC algorithm using the STM32 microcontroller are presented. Tuning of the fast MPC algorithm is discussed. To show the efficacy of the MPC algorithm, it is compared with the classical PID and LQR controllers.

Keywords: LQR controller; PID controller; ball-on-plate process; model predictive control; modeling.