Int. J. Modelling, Identification and Control, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2021 69 Copyright © 2021 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Position tracking and balancing control of ball balancer system using intelligent controllers Ankita Varshney*, Bharat Bhushan and Rupam Singh Department of Electrical Engineering, Delhi Technological University, Shahbad Daulatpur, Main Bawana Road, Delhi, 110042, India Email: ankitavarshney1994@gmail.com Email: bharat@dce.ac.in Email: singhrupam99@gmail.com *Corresponding author Abstract: This paper develops an intelligent control approach for achieving the non-linear control of a two degrees of freedom (2DoF) ball balancer system. The ball balancer system provides an example of an inherently unstable and underactuated electromechanical system that can be used to realise the problem of position tracking and balancing control in robotic systems. Besides, intelligent control takes into consideration the system characteristics and parameters and incorporates the heuristic knowledge and a human logical approach to best train the controller for achieving the desired control task. In this research, the robustness of the intelligent controller is realised by developing an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) which is applied with the ball balancer system to achieve position tracking and balancing control. The numerical simulations are carried out using the first-principles method to perform the system modelling, design, and development of the control strategy for a two-dimensional ball balancer system. The performance of the proposed controller is assessed in terms of the time domain characteristics and a comparative study is done to demonstrate the superiority of intelligent control techniques over classical control techniques. Keywords: ANFIS; adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system; artificial neural network controller; ball balancer system; intelligent controller. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Varshney, A., Bhushan, B. and Singh, R. (2021) ‘Position tracking and balancing control of ball balancer system using intelligent controllers’, Int. J. Modelling, Identification and Control, Vol. 37, No. 1, pp.69–79. Biographical nots: Ankita Varshney received her Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from JSS Academy of Technical Education, Noida, India in 2017, and her master’s degree in Control and Instrumentation from Delhi Technological University, Delhi, India in 2020. She has presented many research papers at several international conferences. Her area of research includes control systems, intelligent control techniques, artificial intelligence, and their applications in robotics and nonlinear control systems. Bharat Bhushan (Senior Member, IEEE) received his BE in Electrical Engineering and an ME in Control and Instrumentation, and a PhD in Investigations on Intelligent Control of nonlinear systems from the Delhi College of Engineering, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India, in 1992, 1996, and 2012, respectively. He is currently a Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Delhi Technological University, Delhi, India. He has authored or co-authored many research papers in conferences and journals. His area of research is control systems, intelligent control, soft computing techniques, and bio-inspired algorithms. He is a Life Member of ISTE. He is a fellow of IETE and IE INDIA. Rupam Singh (Student Member, IEEE) received her Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the Hindustan College of Science and Technology, Mathura, India, in 2013, and her master’s degree in Control system from Amity University, Noida, India, in 2016. She is currently pursuing a PhD in intelligent control and robotics with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Delhi Technological University, Delhi, India. She has many publications in peer-reviewed journals and presented her research papers at several international conferences. Her area of research is artificial intelligence, control system, fault diagnosis, and their application in robotics and unmanned vehicles.