Chen, S.; Padovani, D.; Cioncolini, A.; Alessandri, A. A Cost-Effective Integrated Methodology for Electromagnetic Actuation via Visual Feedback. Sensors2024, 24, 2760.
Chen, S.; Padovani, D.; Cioncolini, A.; Alessandri, A. A Cost-Effective Integrated Methodology for Electromagnetic Actuation via Visual Feedback. Sensors 2024, 24, 2760.
Chen, S.; Padovani, D.; Cioncolini, A.; Alessandri, A. A Cost-Effective Integrated Methodology for Electromagnetic Actuation via Visual Feedback. Sensors2024, 24, 2760.
Chen, S.; Padovani, D.; Cioncolini, A.; Alessandri, A. A Cost-Effective Integrated Methodology for Electromagnetic Actuation via Visual Feedback. Sensors 2024, 24, 2760.
Abstract
Electromagnetic actuation can support many fields of technology, such as robotics or biomedical applications. In this context, fully understanding the system behavior and proposing a low-cost package for feedback control is challenging. Modeling the electromagnetic force is particularly tricky because it is a nonlinear function of the actuated object’s position and coil’s current. Measuring in real time the position of the actuated object with the precision required for accurate motion control is also nontrivial. In this study, we propose a novel, cost-effective electromagnetic set-up to achieve position control via visual feedback. We actuate vertically and under different experimental conditions a 10 mm diameter steel ball hanging on a low-stiffness spring, demonstrating good tracking performance (the position error remains within ±0.5 mm with a negligible phase delay in the best scenarios). The experimental results confirm the feasibility of the proposed set-up, which is characterized by minimum complexity and realized with off-the-shelf and cost-effective components. For these reasons, such a contribution helps to understand and apply electromagnetic actuation even further.
Keywords
image processing; optical tracking; position control; magnetic flux; magnetic force; model-based control; feedback control; electromagnet; Arduino; MATLAB Simulink; webcam; microrobots
Subject
Engineering, Mechanical Engineering
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
