A composite adaptive robust control for pneumatic servo systems with time-varying inertia

This article proposes a composite adaptive robust control for a pneumatic servo system with time-varying inertia to achieve a good tracking performance. The proposed design not only preserves the merits of both direct adaptive robust control and indirect adaptive robust control but also obtains a better performance of the working condition with time-varying inertias. Firstly, prescribed tracking performance is guaranteed without knowing the bounds of parametric and non-parametric uncertainties by leveraging a discontinuous projection and deterministic robust control technique. And a nonlinear tracking differentiator is used to obviate differential signal in backstepping. Secondly, the online parametric estimation algorithm is developed by intelligently integrating tracking error dynamics and physical plant dynamics. By effectively using the information of both tracking error and prediction error, a high adaptation gain can be used for achieving a faster parameter convergence and smaller tracking error. Moreover, exponential convergence of both tracking error and prediction error can be obtained under certain conditions. Lastly, comparative experiments on different conditions are carried out for a single-rod pneumatic cylinder driven by a proportional directional valve to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method.