Controlling chaos in tapping mode atomic force microscopes using improved minimum entropy control

Minimum entropy control technique, an approach for controlling chaos without using the dynamical model of the system, can be improved by being combined with a nature-based optimization technique. In this paper, an ACO-based optimization algorithm is employed to minimize the entropy function of the chaotic system. The feedback gain of a delayed feedback controller is adjusted in the ACO algorithm. The effectiveness of the idea is investigated on suppressing chaos in the tapping-mode atomic force microscope equations. Results show a good performance. The PSO-based version of the minimum entropy control technique is also used to control the chaotic behavior of the AFM, and corresponding results are compared showing almost a same functionality for the two optimization algorithms of PSO and ACO as the minimizing engines of the minimum entropy strategy.