Design of a robust controller for a rotary motion control system: disturbance compensation approach

This paper proposes a design of a robust controller for a rotary motion control system that includes a PID controller, a disturbance observer, and a friction compensator. Friction force versus angular velocity has been measured, and viscous, Coulomb friction and stiction components have been identified. With nominal PID (proportional- integral-derivative) controller, we have observed adverse effects due to friction such as excessive steady-state errors, oscillations, and limit-cycles. By adding a friction model as an augmented nonlinear dynamics of a plant, we are able to conduct a simulation study of a motion control system that matches very well with experimental results. The disturbance observer (DOB) based on simple and effective robust control theory has been implemented to make the rotary motion control system “robust” against inertia/load variations, external torque disturbances, and some of friction forces. Further performance enhancement of the DOB-based robust motion control system has been achieved by adding the friction compensator and experimentally verified.