Theoretical analysis and experimental validation of a simplified fractional order controller for a magnetic levitation system

Fractional order (FO) controllers are among the emerging solutions for increasing closed-loop performance and robustness. However, they have been applied mostly to stable processes. When applied to unstable systems, the tuning technique uses the well-known frequency-domain procedures or complex genetic algorithms. This brief proposes a special type of an FO controller, as well as a novel tuning procedure, which is simple and does not involve any optimization routines. The controller parameters may be determined directly using overshoot requirements and the study of the stability of FO systems. The tuning procedure is given for the general case of a class of unstable systems with pole multiplicity. The advantage of the proposed FO controller consists in the simplicity of the tuning approach. The case study considered in this brief consists in a magnetic levitation system. The experimental results provided show that the designed controller can indeed stabilize the magnetic levitation system, as well as provide robustness to modeling uncertainties and supplementary loading conditions. For comparison purposes, a simple PID controller is also designed to point out the advantages of using the proposed FO controller

Design of an adaptive state feedback controller for a magnetic levitation system

This paper presents designing an adaptive state feedback controller (ASFC) for a magnetic levitation system (MLS), which is an unstable system and has high nonlinearity and represents a challenging control problem. First, a nonadaptive state feedback controller (SFC) is designed by linearization about a selected equilibrium point and designing a SFC by pole-placement method to achieve maximum overshoot of 1.5% and settling time of 1s (5% criterion). When the operating point changes, the designed controller can no longer achieve the design specifications, since it is designed based on a linearization about a different operating point. This gives rise to utilizing the adaptive control scheme to parameterize the state feedback controller in terms of the operating point. The results of the simulation show that the operating point has significant effect on the performance of nonadaptive SFC, and this performance may degrade as the operating point deviates from the equilibrium point, while the ASFC achieves the required design specification for any operating point and outperforms the state feedback controller from this point of view

Fractional - order system modeling and its applications

In order to control or operate any system in a closed-loop, it is important to know its behavior in the form of mathematical models. In the last two decades, a fractional-order model has received more attention in system identification instead of classical integer-order model transfer function. Literature shows recently that some techniques on fractional calculus and fractional-order models have been presenting valuable contributions to real-world processes and achieved better results. Such new developments have impelled research into extensions of the classical identification techniques to advanced fields of science and engineering. This article surveys the recent methods in the field and other related challenges to implement the fractional-order derivatives and miss-matching with conventional science. The comprehensive discussion on available literature would help the readers to grasp the concept of fractional-order modeling and can facilitate future investigations. One can anticipate manifesting recent advances in fractional-order modeling in this paper and unlocking more opportunities for research

A Hybrid Controller for Stability Robustness, Performance Robustness, and Disturbance Attenuation of a Maglev System

Devices using magnetic levitation (maglev) offer the potential for friction-free, high-speed, and high-precision operation. Applications include frictionless bearings, high-speed ground transportation systems, wafer distribution systems, high-precision positioning stages, and vibration isolation tables. Maglev systems rely on feedback controllers to maintain stable levitation. Designing such feedback controllers is challenging since mathematically the electromagnetic force is nonlinear and there is no local minimum point on the levitating force function. As a result, maglev systems are open-loop unstable. Additionally, maglev systems experience disturbances and system parameter variations (uncertainties) during operation. A successful controller design for maglev system guarantees stability during levitating despite system nonlinearity, and desirable system performance despite disturbances and system uncertainties. This research investigates five controllers that can achieve stable levitation: PD, PID, lead, model reference control, and LQR/LQG. It proposes an acceleration feedback controller (AFC) design that attenuates disturbance on a maglev system with a PD controller. This research proposes three robust controllers, QFT, Hinf , and QFT/Hinf , followed by a novel AFC-enhanced QFT/Hinf (AQH) controller. The AQH controller allows system robustness and disturbance attenuation to be achieved in one controller design. The controller designs are validated through simulations and experiments. In this research, the disturbances are represented by force disturbances on the levitated object, and the system uncertainties are represented by parameter variations. The experiments are conducted on a 1 DOF maglev testbed, with system performance including stability, disturbance rejection, and robustness being evaluated. Experiments show that the tested controllers can maintain stable levitation. Disturbance attenuation is achieved with the AFC. The robust controllers, QFT, Hinf , QFT/ Hinf, and AQH successfully guarantee system robustness. In addition, AQH controller provides the maglev system with a disturbance attenuation feature. The contributions of this research are the design and implementation of the acceleration feedback controller, the QFT/ Hinf , and the AQH controller. Disturbance attenuation and system robustness are achieved with these controllers. The controllers developed in this research are applicable to similar maglev systems

Generalized Proportional Integral Control for an Unmanned Quadrotor System

In this article, a generalized proportional integral (GPI) control approach is presented for regulation and trajectory tracking problems in a nonlinear, multivariable quadrotor system model. In the feedback control law, no asymptotic observers or time discretizations are needed in the feedback loop. The GPI controller guarantees the asymptotically and exponentially stable behaviour of the controlled quadrotor position and orientation, as well as the possibilities of carrying out trajectory tracking tasks. The simulation results presented in the paper show that the proposed method exhibits very good stabilization and tracking performance in the presence of atmospheric disturbances and noise measurements

Model-based and data-based frequency domain design of fixed structure robust controller: a polynomial optimization approach

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Toward on-line robot vibratory modes estimation

International audienceThis paper is concerned with preliminary results on robot vibratory modes on-line estimation. The dominating oscillatory mode of the robot arm is isolated by comparing the robot position given by the motors encoders and an external measure at the tool-tip of the robot arm. In this article the external measurement is provided by a laser tracker. The isolation of the oscillation permits to identify the vibratory mode, \textit{i.e.} the natural frequency and the damping ratio of the undesired phenomena. Here we propose a comparison between the algebraic method and the sliding modes for the parameter identification. This comparison is motivated by the fact that both methods provide finite time convergence. Experimental identifications are proposed on a 6 degrees of freedom (DOF) manipulator robot, Stäubli RX-170B