Optimal Control of pneumatic linear drives

Project focus

• Optimal control of nonlinear MIMO systems
• Energy saving
• Experimental verification

Description

The demands on today’s production regarding progressive flexibility and cost reduction as well as resource-efficiency require new approaches in each part of a production line.

Nowadays, pneumatics is popular in various industries, in particular in automation technology, pneumatic actuators are widly used.

Future pneumatic linear drives have to realize fast point-to-point positioning with high accuracy and minimal sensor effort at minimum energy consumption. The use of an inexpensive, discrete distance measurement, instead of a costly continuous position sensor, represents a challenge for the controller design for point-to-point movements. The lack of continuous position information must be compensated by an intelligent control of the drive.

Horizontal test bench with a pneumatic linear drive.

Fast switching valves mounted on a valve block.

In this project, low-cost switching valves are used to control linear pneumatic drives. The aim of this project is to design an optimal control strategy for the valves in order to accomplish a point-to-point motion of the piston actuator. Here, time-optimal and energy-efficient positioning of the piston is required, which is robust against fluctuations in the supply pressure and changing load forces.

Applications

• Production lines
• Handling systems

Selected publications

• A. Pfeffer, T. Glück, and A. Kugi, Soft Landing and Disturbance Rejection for Pneumatic Drives with Partial Position Information, in Proceedings of the 7th IFAC Symposium on Mechatronic Systems & 15th Mechatronics Forum International Conference, Loughborough, UK, 2016, p. 559–566.
  [BibTex] [Download]

  @InProceedings{Pfeffer16a,
  author = {Pfeffer, A. and Gl\"uck, T. and Kugi, A.},
  title = {Soft Landing and Disturbance Rejection for Pneumatic Drives with Partial Position Information},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 7th IFAC Symposium on Mechatronic Systems \& 15th Mechatronics Forum International Conference},
  year = {2016},
  volume = {49},
  number = {21},
  month = {9},
  pages = {559--566},
  doi = {10.1016/j.ifacol.2016.10.661},
  address = {Loughborough, UK},
  issn = {2405-8963},
  }