Discrete-time robust adaptive multi-axis control for feed drive systems

This paper presents a robust adaptive controller design for multi-axis feed drives systems. The proposed method is designed to compensate for the coupling effects among multiple axes that are neglected in most feed drive controllers. Because inertial force from one axial motion affects the contact force between mechanical parts in other axes, the magnitude of friction at the contact surface varies. Considering this coupling effect in controller designs can improve control performance. Because the coupling effect cannot be known in advance, and it varies with respect to environmental conditions such as temperature, this paper first presents an adaptive controller design. Next, the design is extended to have robust stability for unanticipated plant modelling errors disturbances, because the robustness of adaptive controllers is known to be low due to the complex mechanism of controllers and estimators of plant model parameters. The design problem of the robust controller is formulated as a minimization problem under the linear matrix inequality constraints. The effectiveness of the adaptive multi-axis controller is demonstrated by comparative experiments with an adaptive controller that neglects the coupling effect. In addition, the robust adaptive controller is confirmed to be effective by comparison with a non-robust adaptive controller. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.