Nonlinear Compensation for High Performance Feedback Systems With Actuator Imperfections

Measures to reduce control performance for greater robustness (e.g. reduced bandwidth, shallow loop roll-off) must be enhanced if the plant or actuators are known to have nonlinear characteristics that cause variations in loop transmission. Common causes of these nonlinear behaviors are actuator saturation and friction/stiction in the moving parts of mechanical systems. Systems with these characteristics that also have stringent closed loop performance requirements present the control designer with an extremely challenging problem. A design method for these systems is presented that combines very aggressive Nyquist-stable linear control to provide large negative feedback with nonlinear feedback to compensate for the effects of multiple nonlinearities in the loop that threaten stability and performance. The efficacy of this approach is experimentally verified on a parallel kinematic mechanism with multiple uncertain nonlinearities used for vibration suppression.