MagLev Controller Design

In this project, I developed a PID controller using LabVIEW to control a magnetically levitating ball. The ball responded to inputs of varying types: constant height, sinusoidal wave, square wave, and random input. For the sine wave input, a maximum amplitude of 39 mm was achieved at a frequency of 0.5 Hz, and a maximum amplitude of 28 mm was achieved at 2 Hz. For the square wave, an amplitude of 8 mm was achieved at 1 Hz. These maximum values correspond to the highest values at which the controller could maintain control over the ball. Beyond these values, the system became unsteady and the ball either dropped out of the magnetic field's influence or became too strongly drawn to the magnet.

The videos below are of the ball responding to a sine wave input and a square wave input, respectively. The first 4 images are of the LabVIEW interface during active trials of the system for each of the 4 input types. These images show the PID values used for the controller as well as the amplitude and frequency for that specific trial. The final image is the LabVIEW block diagram that generated the interfaces above, performed the active calculations for the controller, and generated the plots.