Performance tuning of robust motion controllers for high-accuracy positioning systems

This paper presents a structural design method of robust motion controllers for high-accuracy positioning systems, which makes it possible to tune the performance of the whole closed-loop system systematically. First, a stabilizing control input is designed based on Lyapunov redesign for the system in the presence of uncertainty and disturbance. And adopting the internal model following control, robust internal-loop compensator (RIC) is proposed. By using the structural characteristics of the RIC, disturbance attenuation properties and the performance of the closed-loop system determined by the variation of controller gains are analyzed. Next, in order to design a robust motion controller for a high performance positioning system, dual RIC structure is proposed and it is shown that if the synthesis of the robust motion control law is performed in the RIC framework, the robust property of RIC can be naturally implanted in the feedback controller. The proposed structural design of robust motion controller provides a systematic approach to the problem of robust stability and performance requirement in the face of uncertainty. Furthermore, by allowing the tradeoffs between robust stability and performance to be quantified in a simple fashion, it can illuminate systematic design procedure of the robust motion controllers. Finally, the proposed method is verified through simulation and the performance is evaluated by experiments using a high-accuracy positioning system.     

Piecewise affine modeling and compensation in motion of linear ultrasonic actuators

Ultrasonic actuators used in high-precision mechatronics possess strong frictional effects, which are among the main problems in precision motion control. Traditional methods apply model-based nonlinear feedforward to compensate the friction, thus requiring closed loop stability and safety constraint considerations. In this article, model-based parametric controllers are developed to obtain an optimal positioning control for these motors. A systematic approach which uses piecewise affine models greatly simplifies the friction model compared to the traditional methods. Issues about the nonlinear effects of the friction are addressed by designing a robust control law near zero speed. These developments result in a gain-scheduling optimal input, which is simple to carry out in real-time applications. The controller is expected to improve the safety constraints and the tracking performance for actuator operation.     

Optimal construction and control of flexible manipulators: a case study based on LQR output feedback

A mechatronic approach is studied here to design the mechanical system and controller concurrently for a robotic flexible manipulator. There is no coupling effects among these components which exit in traditional sequential design and this concurrent development leads to the global optimal performance. A linear quadratic regulator with output feedback is used to compare the results obtained from the traditional approach and this mechatronic approach. Using the mechatronic approach, optimal beam shapes as well as the associated optimal controllers for different feedback structures and for different objective functions can be achieved. Numerical results have indicated substantial improvements on performance.     

Development of two-axis arm motion generator using active impedance

In this research a two-dimensional arm motion generator, composed of two linear motors, was developed. The inertia, damping and/or stiffness characteristics of the motion generator can be changed on the real-time basis by properly regulating the force generated by the linear motors. That is, active impedance is implemented without actual change in the physical structure of the motion generator. Control of the motor force is carried out by regulating the input currents supplied to the linear motors by using a common voltage-driven driver. In the control system, the time delay due to A/D conversion of the current output has an adverse effect on the stability of the system. Furthermore, disturbances caused by characteristics of the motion generator also exist. To cope with these difficulties, a 2-DOF controller combined with LQ-servo and H-infinity controllers was used. The gains of the controller are selected so that disturbance rejection, stability guarantee and tracking performance may be achieved. This motion generator can be used to measure kinesthetic sense associated with the human arm and thus leads to developing the products for which the kinesthetic sense is taken into account.     

Development and implementation of an FPGA based fractional order controller for a DC motor

Fractional calculus has been gaining more and more popularity in control engineering in numerous fields, including mechatronic applications. One of the most common applications in all mechatronic domains is the control of DC motors. Several control algorithms have been proposed for such motors, ranging from traditional PID algorithms, to the more sophisticated advanced methods, including fractional order controllers. Nevertheless, very little information regarding the implementation problems of such fractional algorithms exists today. The paper proposes a simple approach for designing a fractional order PI controller for controlling the speed of a DC motor. The resulting controller is implemented on an FPGA target and its performance is compared to other possible benchmarks. The experimental results show the efficiency of the designed fractional order PI controller. Beside the initial DC motor, two other different DC motors are also used in the experiments to demonstrate the robustness of the controller.     

Robust motion controller design for high-accuracy positioningsystems

This paper presents a controller structure for robust high speed and accuracy motion control systems. The overall control system consists of four elements: a friction compensator; a disturbance observer for the velocity loop; a position loop feedback controller; and a feedforward controller acting on the desired output. A parameter estimation technique coupled with friction compensation is used as the first step in the design process. The friction compensator is based on the experimental friction model and it compensates for unmodeled nonlinear friction. Stability of the closed-loop is provided by the feedback controller. The robust feedback controller based on the disturbance observer compensates for external disturbances and plant uncertainties. Precise tracking is achieved by the zero phase error tracking controller. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate performance improvement obtained by each element in the proposed robust control structure     

Integrated micro- and miniscale electromechanical systems with permanent-magnet servo-motors and VLSI drivers–controllers

The current trends in development and deployment of advanced micro- and miniscale electromechanical systems (MEMS) have facilitated the unified fundamental, applied, and experimental research activities in the analysis and design of state-of-the-art motion devices (rotational and translational electromechanical motion devices), integrated circuits (ICs), and controllers. The objectives of this paper are to design, develop, and compare different control algorithms for high-performance MEMS with permanent-magnet rotational servo-motors controlled by ICs (VLSI driver–controller is fabricated using CMOS technology). The problems to be solved are very challenging because a number of long-standing issues in design, hardware integration, control, nonlinear analysis, and robustness have to be solved. The major emphases of this paper are the analysis and design of robust servo-systems, as well as the comparison of the dynamic performance of closed-loop MEMS with different control algorithms. We synthesize, verify, and test proportional–integral, integral with state feedback extension, relay, and sliding mode controllers. It is illustrated that the sliding mode control laws drive the states and tracking error to the switching surface and maintain (keep) the states and tracking error within this nonlinear switching surface in spite of different references, disturbances, parameter variations, and uncertainties. That is, robust tracking, desired accuracy, and disturbance attenuation are achieved. We report the experimental setup which was built to perform the advanced studies of high-performance MEMS. The testbed was built to integrate permanent-magnet microscale servo-motor and ICs (driver–controller).     

Adaptive robust motion control of linear motors for precision manufacturing

Linear motors offer several advantages over their rotary counterparts in many precision manufacturing applications requiring linear motion; linear motors can achieve a much higher speed and have the potential of gaining a higher load positioning accuracy due to the elimination of mechanical transmission mechanisms. However, these advantages are obtained at the expense of added difficulties in controlling such a system. Specifically, linear motors are more sensitive to disturbances and parameter variations. Furthermore, certain types of linear motors such as the iron core are subject to significant nonlinear effects due to periodic cogging force and force ripple. To address all these issues, the recently proposed adaptive robust control (ARC) strategy is applied and a discontinuous projection-based ARC controller is constructed. In particular, based on the special structures of various periodic nonlinear forces, design models consisting of known basis functions with unknown weights are used to approximate those unknown nonlinear forces. On-line parameter adaptation is then utilized to reduce the effect of various parametric uncertainties such as unknown weights, inertia, and motor parameters while certain robust control laws are used to handle the uncompensated uncertain nonlinearities effectively for high performance. The resulting ARC controller achieves a guaranteed transient performance and a guaranteed final tracking accuracy in the presence of both parametric uncertainties and uncertain nonlinearities. In addition, in the presence of parametric uncertainties, the controller achieves asymptotic output tracking. Extensive simulation results are shown to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.     

GA-based multiobjective PID control for a linear brushless DC motor

This paper presents a robust output tracking control design method for a linear brushless DC motor with modeling uncertainties. Two frequency-domain specifications directly related to the mixed sensitivity function and control energy consumption are imposed to ensure stability and performance robustness. With regard to time-domain specifications, the rise time, maximum overshoot and steady-state error of the step response are considered. A generalized two-parameters proportional, integral, and derivative (PID) control framework is developed via a genetic searching approach ensuring the specifications imposed. The proposed design method is intuitive and practical that offers an effective way to implement simple but robust solutions covering a wide range of plant perturbation and, in addition, provides excellent tracking performance without resorting to excessive control. Extensive experimental and numerical results for a linear brushless motor confirm the proposed control design approach.     

Robust H∞ control with multiple constraints forthe track-following system of an optical disk drive

In this paper, the authors design a tracking controller which satisfies transient response specifications and maintains tracking error within a tolerable limit for the uncertain track-following system of an optical disk drive. To this end, a robust H_∞ control problem, with regional stability constraints and sinusoidal disturbance rejection is considered. The internal model principle is used for rejecting the sinusoidal disturbance caused by eccentric rotation of the disk. The authors show that a condition satisfying the regional stability constraints can be expressed in terms of a linear matrix inequality (LMI) using the Lyapunov theory and S-procedure. Finally, a tracking controller is obtained by solving an LMI optimization problem involving two LMIs. The proposed controller design method is evaluated through an experiment     

A Repetitive Model Predictive Control Approach for Precision Tracking of a Linear Motion System

In this paper, a new model predictive control (MPC) approach suitable for high precision linear motion drive operating with repetitive tracking tasks is presented. For the proposed predictive controller, the feedforward controller of the conventional MPC has been modified to provide zero-phase learning property. This is achieved by augmenting the reference trajectory with a phase-compensated term that is updated with the historical tracking error. The proposed approach attempts to combine the merits of both the conventional MPC and repetitive control schemes. Experimental results have demonstrated that the system effectively reduces the tracking error from the periodic disturbance caused by the friction. Its performance under varying reference conditions and different loadings shows that the system is robust.      

Robust tracking control of mechatronic arms

A robust tracking control scheme based on variable structure systems (VSS) theory is presented to cope with the uncertainties and parameter variations in mechatronic arm dynamics. A modification of VSS is used to remove its restrictions with regard to chattering and required control efforts. By blending VSS with a self-organizing controller (SOC), a sliding mode self-organizing controller (SLIMSOC)scheme has been developed. In this scheme, both control actions and performance evaluation are executed using the distance from the desired sliding surface and rate of approach to it. Comparisons are drawn and it is shown that the inherent robustness properties of variable structure systems are retained while the undesirable chatter motion of the sliding mode is eliminated. The results are illustrated by applications of SLIMSOC on a direct drive SCARA type of robot.     

Adaptive robust motion control of SISO nonlinear systems with implementation on linear motors

For the purpose of controlling an X–Y table driven by linear motors with a high precision, an adaptive robust motion tracking control method is first introduced. The controller is developed based upon a class of SISO nonlinear systems whose nonlinear part can be linearly parameterized. The advantage of such a controller is that parametric uncertainties and unknown disturbances can be dealt with, which is essential for a high precision of the control of linear-motor-driven X–Y table. With the prior knowledge of the bounds of the system parameters, a discontinuous projection is utilized in the adaptive law to ensure the boundedness of the parameters estimates. The algorithm is then implemented on a real X–Y table driven by the linear motors. In the modeling of such a system, fiction effects are also considered, which is useful for the derivation of the adaptive law. Experiments on the X–Y table are carried out and the results show excellent tracking performance of the system.     

Mechatronic design and injection speed control of an ultra high-speed plastic injection molding machine

This paper presents pragmatic techniques for mechatronic design and injection speed control of an ultra high-speed plastic injection molding machine. Practical rules are proposed to select specifications of key mechatronic components in the hydraulic servo system, in order to efficiently construct an industry-level machine. With reasonable assumptions, a mathematical model of the injection speed control system is established and open-loop experimental data are then employed to validate the system model. By the model, a gain-scheduling PI controller and a fuzzy PI controller are presented, compared and then implemented into a digital signal processor (DSP) using standard C programming techniques. Experimental results are conducted to show that the two proposed controllers are capable of achieving satisfactory speed tracking performance. These developed techniques may provide useful references for engineers and practitioners attempting to design pragmatic, low-cost but high-performance ultra high-injection speed controllers.     

Dual Servo Control of a High-Tilt 3-DOF Microparallel Positioning Platform

This paper presents a precise positioning control of a microparallel positioning platform using a dual-stage servo system. The result of the research can be applied to dual-stage-type parallel machines for improving the positioning accuracy. The proposed platform adopts a dual-stage system that consists of three coarse actuators and three fine actuators to realize 3 degrees of freedom (DOF) motion. The 3-DOF motion of the end-effector is measured by a set of three linear sensors. Dynamic models for the coarse and fine actuators are derived by the system identification approach. The gain-scheduled multi-input multi-output (MIMO) controllers are synthesized based on the modeling. The MIMO controller is designed with a mixed-sensitivity criterion on tracking performance and positioning capability, and the design of the gain scheduler is based on the kinematics change. By integrating the controllers for two kinds of actuators, a dual servo controller can be developed based on the master-slave with decoupling structure. An antiwindup controller and a feedforward compensator are adopted to improve the performance. The successful performance of the synthesized dual servo controller is validated through experiments on tracking to guarantee submicrometer accuracy.     

Fuzzy Controllers With Maximum Sensitivity for Servosystems

In this paper, new Takagi-Sugeno proportional-integral-fuzzy controllers (PI-FCs) to control a class of servosystems are proposed. The controlled plants in these control systems (CSs) are of integral type. In the first phase, there are designed linear PI controllers tuned in terms of the extended symmetrical optimum method to ensure the imposed overshoot and settling time with respect to the set point and to three possible types of load disturbance inputs. The connections between the two design parameters of the linear controllers and the desired maximum sensitivity and complementary sensitivity considering one of the disturbance inputs are derived. Then, accepting the approximate equivalence between the fuzzy controllers and the linear ones in certain conditions and using the modal equivalence principle, an attractive design method for the PI-FCs is proposed. With this respect, the design method guarantees maximum imposed sensitivity and complementary sensitivity for the CSs and, therefore, good responses with respect to modifications of the set point and of the disturbance inputs, and robustness with respect to model uncertainties. An application in speed control of a nonlinear servosystem with variable load, accompanied by experimental results, is provided to validate the new results, the fuzzy controllers, and a design method     

Torque and velocity ripple elimination of AC permanent magnet motor control systems using the internal model principle

This paper addresses the problem of torque and velocity ripple elimination in AC permanent magnet (PM) motor control systems. The torque ripples caused by DC offsets that are present in the current sensors of the motor driver and the digital-to-analog converters of the motion controller are studied and formulated mathematically. These torque ripples eventually generate velocity ripples at the speed output and degrade the system performance. In this paper the torque ripples are modeled as a sinusoidal function with a frequency depending on the motor speed. The internal model principle (IMP) is then used to design a controller to eliminate the torque and velocity ripples without estimating the amplitude and the phase values of the sinusoidal disturbance. A gain scheduled (GS) robust two degree of freedom (2DOF) speed regulator based on the IMP and the pole-zero placement is developed to eliminate the torque and velocity ripples and achieve a desirable tracking response. Simulation and experimental results reveal that the proposed GS robust 2DOF speed regulator can effectively eliminate the torque ripples generated by DC current offsets, and produce a velocity ripple-free output response.     

Resonant converters: nonlinear analysis and control

The current trends in development and deployment of advanced switching converters have facilitated the unified activities in topology design, nonlinear analysis, optimization, and control. In this paper, by using nonlinear models of resonant converters, bounded controllers are designed to ensure a spectrum of performance objectives required. To attain high efficiency and power density, new converter topologies were developed. It is recognized that advanced closed-loop configurations must be designed to guarantee a spectrum of specifications and requirements imposed on the converter dynamics. The output voltage of converters is regulated by changing the duty ratio, which is constrained by lower and upper limits. In this paper, to approach design tradeoffs and analyze converter performance (settling time, overshoot, stability margins, and other quantities), the constraints and nonlinearities are thoroughly examined. Innovative controllers are synthesized to ensure performance improvements. To illustrate the control laws designed and to validate these algorithms, analytical and experimental results are presented and discussed. In particular, nonlinear analysis and design with experimental verification are performed and documented for a resonant converter with zero-current-switching     

Robust learning control of a high precision planar parallel manipulator

End-point positioning accuracy and fast settling time are essential in the motion system aimed at semiconductor packaging applications. In this paper, a novel robust learning control method for a direct-drive planar parallel manipulator is presented. A frequency-domain system identification approach is used to identify the high frequency dynamic of the manipulator. A robust control design method is employed to design a stable, fast tracking response feedback controller with less sensitivity to high frequency disturbance and the control parameters are determined using genetic algorithm. A Fourier-series-based iterative learning controller is designed and used on the feedforward path of the controller to further improve the settling time by reducing the dynamic tracking error of the manipulator. Experimental results demonstrate that the planar parallel manipulator has significant improvements on motion performance in terms of positioning accuracy, settling time and stability when compared with traditional XY-stages. This shows that the proposed manipulator provides a superior alternative to XY-motion stages for high precision positioning.     

Design of a robust force controller for the new mini motion package using quantitative feedback theory

The use of hydraulic systems in industrial applications has become widespread due to their efficiency advantages. In recent years, hybrid actuation system, which combines electric and hydraulic technology in a compact unit, can be adapted to a wide variety of force, speed and torque requirements. Moreover, the hybrid actuation system has dealt with the energy consumption and noise problem existed in the conventional hydraulic system. Mini motion package (MMP) is one type of the new low cost hybrid actuator. This MMP is considered as a novel linear actuator with various applications such as robotics, automation, plastic injection-molding and metal forming technology. However, this efficiency gain is often accompanied by a degradation of system stability and control problems. In this paper, to maintain robust performance requirement, tracking performance specification, and disturbance attenuation requirement, the design of a robust force controller for the new hybrid actuator using quantitative feedback theory (QFT) is presented. A family of plants model for MMP is obtained from experimental frequency responses of the system in the presence of significant uncertainty. Experimental results show that highly robust force tracking by the MMP actuator could be achieved even if the stiffness of environment and set-point force change. In addition, it is understood that the new system has energy-saving effect even though it has almost the same response as that of valve controlled system.