Robust control for a networked direct-drive linear motion control system: Design and experiments

This paper investigates the robust control method for networked dynamic systems and its application for a direct-drive linear motion control system in a network environment. The unavoidable network-induced random delays are modeled as Markov chains. The control object of the linear motion control system in this study is a double-sided linear switched reluctance machine (DLSRM). To tackle the inherent uncertainties in the DLSRM, a robust control strategy is designed by proposing a new Lyapunov function and applying the free-weighting matrix technique. A state feedback robust controller is designed such that the closed-loop direct-drive linear motion control system over a network is stochastically robust stable. The robust controller can be conveniently obtained by solving a set of linear matrix inequalities. The numerical simulation of an angular positioning system is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed robust control method. Furthermore, the experimental tests on the networked direct-drive linear motion control system verify the practicability of the proposed method.