High-precision position control of a novel planar switched reluctance motor

This paper presents the position control of a novel two-dimensional (2-D) switched reluctance (SR) planar motor. The planar motor consists of a six-coil moving platform and a flat stator base made from laminated mild steel blocks. Unlike conventional x-y tables, which stack two moving slides on top of each other, the proposed 2-D planar motor has the advantages of simple mechanical construction, high reliability, and the ability to withstand harsh operating conditions. Together with the two linear encoders attached to the x-axis and y-axis, the motor can be controlled under closed-loop mode. To combat the problem of force nonlinearity, this paper proposes a cascade controller with force linearization technique to implement the drive controller. Due to the unique structure of the planar motor's magnetic circuit, there is very little coupling between the x-axis and y-axis, and no decoupling compensation is needed. Preliminary results show that the proposed SR planar motor has a positional accuracy of 5 /spl mu/m and a maximum acceleration/deceleration rate of 2 G.