1122
3, JUNE 2013
Accurate Motion Control of Linear Motors With
Adaptive Robust Compensation of Nonlinear
Electromagnetic Field Effect
Zheng Chen, Student Member, IEEE, Bin Yao, Senior Member, IEEE, and Qingfeng Wang, Member, IEEE
Abstract—Many control methodologies have been applied to the
motion control of linear motor drive systems. Compensations of
nonlinearities such as frictions and cogging forces have also been
carried out to obtain better tracking performance. However, the
relationship between the driving current and the resulting motor
force has been assumed to be linear, which is invalid for high driv-
ing coil currents due to the saturating electromagnetic field effect.
This paper focuses on the effective compensation of nonlinear elec-
tromagnetic field effect so that the system can be operated at even
higher acceleration or heavier load without losing achievable con-
trol performance. Specifically, cubic polynomials with unknown
weights are used for an effective approximation of the unknown
nonlinearity between the electromagnetic force and the driving
current. The effectiveness of such an approximation is verified
by offline identification experiments. An adaptive robust control
(ARC) algorithm with online tuning of the unknown weights and
other system parameters is then developed to account for various
uncertainties. Theoretically, the proposed ARC algorithm achieves
a guaranteed transient and steady-state performance for position
tracking, as well as zero steady-state tracking error when sub-
jected to parametric uncertainties only. Comparative experiments
of ARC with and without compensation of electromagnetic non-
linearity done on both axes of a linear-motor-driven industrial
gantry are shown. The results show that the proposed ARC al-
gorithm achieves better tracking performance than existing ones,
validating the effectiveness of the proposed approach in practical
applications.
Index Terms—Adaptive compensation, adaptive robust control
(ARC), linear motor, motion control, nonlinear electromagnetic
field effect.
Manuscript received April 3, 2011; revised June 22, 2011 and December 2,
2011; accepted March 27, 2012. Date of publication May 18, 2012; date of
current version January 18, 2013. Recommended by Technical Editor R. Oboe.
This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central
Universities (2012QNA4001). This paper was presented in part at the ASME
2011 Dynamic Systems and Control Conference, Arlington, VA, October 31–
November 2.
Z. Chen is with the State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power Transmis-
sion and Control, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China (e-mail:
cwlinus@gmail.com).
B. Yao is with the State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power Transmission and Con-
trol, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China, on leave from the School
of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907 USA
(e-mail: byao@ieee.org).
Q. Wang is with the Institute of Mechatronic Control Engineering, Zhejiang
University, Hangzhou 310058, China (e-mail: qfwang@zju.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMECH.2012.2197217
1083-4435/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE
IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 18, NO.
I. INTRODUCTION
IGH-SPEED/HIGH-ACCURACY linear motions are of-
H ten required in modern mechanical systems, such as ma-
chine tools [1], semiconductor and microelectronics manufac-
turing equipment, and automatic inspection machines [2], [3].
Direct-drive linear motors eliminate gear-related mechanical
transmission problems such as backlash and structural flexibility
and, thus, have the potential of achieving higher speed and ac-
curacy. To realize those potentials, many control methods have
been developed, such as H∞ optimal control [4], disturbance
observer [5] and neural-network-based control [6]. In [7]–[9],
an adaptive robust control (ARC) approach is proposed for the
high-performance robust control of uncertain nonlinear systems
in the presence of both parametric uncertainties and uncertain
nonlinearities [10]–[13]. The approach has also been success-
fully applied to the high-performance motion control of linear
motors [14]–[17] and the coordinated control of linear motor
driven biaxel systems [18]–[21].
Better compensations of specific nonlinearities have also been
carried out to further improve achievable tracking performance,
such as the friction compensation in [22]–[25] and the cog-
ging force compensation in [16], [17], and [25]–[27]. However,
one of the important nonlinearities in iron-core linear motors,
the saturating electromagnetic field effect [28], [29], has been
largely ignored and the relationship between the driving current
and the resulting motor force has been assumed to be linear,
which is true only for small driving coil currents. As revealed
in the manufacturer specification [30], force constant, defined
as the ratio between the motor force to the motor current, de-
creases significantly far before the driving coil current reaches
its physical saturation limit. As such, existing control methods
have to restrict the maximum allowable accelerations in exper-
iments way below their hardware limits in order to neglect the
saturating electromagnetic field effect, leading to an underuti-
lized drive system. To make full use of the hardware capability
of linear motor drive systems, it is necessary to explicitly takes
into account the nonlinear force constant at large driving coil
currents, which is the focus of this paper.
In this paper, cubic polynomials with unknown weights are
used for an effective approximation of the unknown nonlinear-
ity between the electromagnetic force and the driving current.
The effectiveness of such an approximation is verified by of-
fline identification experiments. It is shown that such a cubic
polynomial approximation can effectively capture the unknown
nonlinear electromagnetic field effect at large driving currents
CHEN et al.: ACCURATE MOTION CONTROL OF LINEAR MOTORS WITH ADAPTIVE ROBUST COMPENSATION
while preserving the linear characteristics seen for small driv-
ing currents. An ARC algorithm with effective compensation
of nonlinear electromagnetic field effect is subsequently de-
veloped. The unknown weights and other system parameters
are tuned online via certain adaptation law to obtain a better
model compensation. Comparative experiments of ARC with
and without compensation of electromagnetic nonlinearity have
been carried out on both axes of a linear-motor-driven indus-
trial gantry. The results show that the proposed ARC algorithm
achieves better tracking performance than existing ones, vali-
dating the effectiveness of the proposed approach in practical
applications.
II. PROBLEM FORMULATION
When neglecting the fast electrical dynamics and structural
flexible modes [9], the dynamic model of an iron-core linear
motor [30] can be described by
M ÿ = Fm (u) − B ẏ − Af Sf (ẏ) + Fdis (1)
where y, ẏ, and ÿ represent the displacement, velocity, and ac-
celeration of the inertia load, respectively. u is the control input
voltage representing the driving coil current, M is the inertia, B
is the viscous friction coefficient, and Af is the Coulomb fric-
tion coefficient. Sf (ẏ) represents a known continuous or smooth
function used to approximate the traditional discontinuous sign
function sgn(ẏ) for effective Coulomb friction compensation
in implementation. Fm (u) is the electromagnetic force gener-
ated by the linear motor, and Fdis represents the lumped effect
of external disturbances and various types of modeling errors,
such as cogging force and unmodeled friction. For small driv-
ing coil currents, the nonlinear electromagnetic field effect can
be ignored, and the electromagnetic force is considered to be
proportional to driving coil current, which has been assumed in
previous study [14]. With this assumption, Fm is related to u by
Fm (u) = Ku (2)
where K = Km Ki . Km and Ki represent the average force
constant and the current amplifier gain, respectively.
For large driving current, the nonlinear electromagnetic field
effect is obvious and the resulting force constant decreases sig-
nificantly as the driving current increases. As such, when driving
heavy load and/or during high acceleration movements, using
the linear assumption as in the previous studies may lead to
a rather inaccurate modeling of the resulting electromagnetic
force, which may result in instability of the resulting closed-
loop system. In order to make full use of the available driving
capability of the motor hardware, it is necessary to explicitly
take into account the effect of nonlinear electromagnetic field.
Furthermore, to avoid the potentially very expensive accurate
modeling and identification of the nonlinear electromagnetic ef-
fect, the nonlinearity will be treated unknown and learned online
through proper parameter adaptation. Specifically, a third-order
polynomial function of the input u with unknown weights is
used to approximate the unknown electromagnetic nonlinearity
between the thrust force and the input voltage as
Fm (u) = A1 u + A2 u |u| + A3 u3 (3)
1123
where A1 , A2 , and A3 are three unknown weights with A1 >
0. Such an approximation model is used due to the following
several considerations.
R1: The nonlinear phenomenon is effectively captured by the
quadratic and cubic term of the polynomial. And the fitting
error can be very small for all driving currents.
R2: Since the coefficients A2 and A3 are relatively very small
when compared to A1 , the effect of the quadratic and cubic
term can be neglected at normal driving currents which are
relatively small, leading to the usual linear characteristics
of (2) between thrust force and current with A1 = K.
R3: Since the nonlinear electromagnetic effect has symmetry
with respect to the positive and negative driving currents,
|u| is used in the quadratic term to guarantee the odd
function of Fm (u). Note that the resulting function Fm (u)
in (3) is still continuous and differentiable.
R4: By restricting Ai ’s to some known ranges, the function
Fm (u) can be made strictly monotonic in the entire oper-
ating range of the physical system where the thrust force
Fm is below the peak force and the control input u is less
than its limit. Such restrictions are necessary as the actual
electromagnetic nonlinearity is strictly monotonic. With
this conditioning, the resulting function (3) is a one-to-one
mapping. Thus, for any required thrust force Fm , a unique
input u exists and can be obtained by letting (3) be zero
and solving for the real root of the resulting third-order
equation within the operating range.
With (3), the state-space form of the system (1) is
ẋ1 = x2
θ1 ẋ2 = u − θ2 x2 − θ3 Sf (x2 ) + θ4 + θ5 u |u| + θ6 u3 + d˜
(4)
where x1 and x2 are the position and velocity, respec-
tively. The unknown parameter set is defined as θ =
[θ1 , θ2 , θ3 , θ4 , θ5 , θ6 ]T ∈ R6 , with θ1 = AM1 , θ2 = AB1 , θ3 =
Af
A1 , θ5 = A A3 Fd i s
A 1 , θ6 = A 1 , and θ4 being the nominal value of A 1 .
2
d˜ = Ad 1i s − θ4 represents the time-varying portion of the nor-
F
malized lumped uncertainties. The following assumptions are
made.1
Assumption 1: The unknown parameters and uncertain non-
linearities are bounded by known bounds, i.e.,
θ ∈ Ωθ = {θ : θm in ≤ θ ≤ θm ax } (5)
d˜ ∈ Ωd = {d˜ : |d|
˜ ≤ δd } (6)
T
where θm in = [θ1m in , . . ., θ6m in ] , θm ax = [θ1m ax , . . .,
θ6m ax ]T , and δd are known.
Assumption 2: For any θ̂5 and θ̂6 where θ5m in ≤ θ̂5 ≤ θ5m ax
and θ6m in ≤ θ̂6 ≤ θ6m ax , the function fu (u) = u + θ̂5 u |u| +
θ̂6 u3 is strictly monotonic in the operating range of |u| ≤ uM ,
where uM represents the physical limit of the control input
voltage.
1 The following notations are used throughout this paper: ˆ • denotes the esti-
mate of •, ˜• denotes the parameter estimation error of •, e.g., θ̃ = θ̂ − θ.
1124 IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 18, NO. 3, JUNE 2013

The objective is to synthesize a control input u under As- obtains

sumptions 1 and 2 such that the output x1 tracks the desired
θ1 ṗ = v + ϕ̄T θ̄ − θ̃5 u |u| − θ̃6 u3 + d˜ (12)
trajectory xd (t) as closely as possible while having accurate
on-line parameter estimates (i.e., θ̃ = θ̂(t) − θ −→ 0). Here, where ẋ2eq = ẍd − k1 ė and ϕ̄T = [−ẋ2eq , −x2 , −Sf (x2 ), 1],
xd (t) is assumed to be known, bounded, and at least second- θ̄ = [θ1 , θ2 , θ3 , θ4 ]T . Noting the structure of (12), the following
order differentiable. DCDIARC control law is proposed:
v = va + vs , va = va1 + va2 , va1 = −ϕ̄Td ˆθ̄
III. ARC OF LINEAR MOTORS
vs = vs1 + vs2 , vs1 = −ks1 p (13)
A. Projection-Type Adaptation Law
where va1 is the adjustable model compensation for perfect
As in [7]–[9], the following projection-type adaptation law
tracking, vs1 is a nonlinear feedback to stabilize the nominal
is used to keep the parameter estimates θ̂ within the known
system, va2 is a fast dynamic compensation term, and vs2 is
bounded set Ω̄θ , the closure of the set Ωθ :
a robust performance feedback term. Both va2 and vs2 will
˙
θ̂ = Projθ̂ (Γτ ) , θ̂(0) ∈ Ωθ (7) be synthesized later. ϕ̄Td = [−ẍd , −ẋd , −Sf (ẋd ), 1] is the
regressor using the desired trajectory signals to minimize the
where τ is any adaptation function, Γ(t) > 0 is any positive- effect of measurement noise. ks1 is a nonlinear gain large enough
definite symmetric matrix, and the projection mapping Projθ̂ (•) such that the matrix below is positive definite
is defined by 
ks1 − k2 − θ1 k1 +θ2 + θ3 g(x2 , t) − 21 (k1 θ2 + k1 θ3 g(x2 , t))
⎧
⎪
◦ − 12 (k1 θ2 + k1 θ3 g(x2 , t)) 1 3
2 θ1 k1
⎨ ζ, if θ̂ ∈ Ωθ or nTθ̂ ζ ≤ 0
Projθ̂ (ζ) =   (14)
n nT
⎪
⎩ I − Γ n Tθ̂ Γnθ̂ ζ, θ̂ ∈ ∂Ωθ and nTθ̂ ζ > 0 where k2 > 0 is a positive gain, and g(x2 , t) is a nonlinear
θ̂ θ̂ function defined by Mean Value Theorem
(8)
◦ Sf (x2 ) − Sf (ẋd ) = g(x2 , t)ė. (15)
in which ζ ∈ R , Ωθ and ∂Ωθ denote the interior and the bound-
p

ary of Ωθ , respectively, and nθ̂ represents the outward unit Substituting (13) into (12) leads to
normal vector at θ̂ ∈ ∂Ωθ . Properties of this projection-type θ1 ṗ = −ks1 p + (θ1 k1 − θ2 − θ3 g)ė + vs2 + va2 − ϕTd θ̃ + d˜
adaptation law are detailed in [9]. (16)
where ϕTd = [−ẍd , −ẋd , −Sf (ẋd ), 1, u |u| , u3 ].
B. ARC Law Define d0 and d˜∗ (t) to be the nominal value and the time-
˜ respectively, i.e.,
varying portion of −ϕTd θ̃ + d,
With the use of projection-type adaptation law (7), the pa-
rameter estimates are bounded with known bounds, regardless d0 + d˜∗ (t) = −ϕTd θ̃ + d.
˜ (17)
of how the actual estimation function τ and adaptation-rate ma-
trix Γ are designed. In the following, this property will be used to d0 is compensated through the fast adaptation of direct ARC
synthesize a desired compensation DIARC control law (DCDI- design [7], [9] by
ARC) for the system (4), which achieves a guaranteed transient va2 = −dˆ0 (18)
and steady-state output tracking accuracy in general.
Define a virtual control input v as where dˆ0 represents the estimate of d0 updated by
˙
v = u + θ̂5 u |u| + θ̂6 u3 . (9) dˆ0 = Projdˆ0 (γd p), |dˆ0 (0)| ≤ dˆm ax (19)

From Assumption 2, for any bounded v, there exists a unique in which γd > 0 and dˆm ax is a preset bound for dˆ0 (t). The
root u of |u| ≤ uM for the cubic equation (9); the root can be projection mapping in (19) guarantees that |dˆ0 (t)| ≤ dˆm ax , ∀t.
obtained analytically by the standard formulas of solving cubic Substituting (18) and (17) into (16), we have
equations. Substitute (9) into (4):
θ1 ṗ = −ks1 p + (θ1 k1 − θ2 − θ3 g)ė + vs2 − d˜0 + d˜∗ (t).
ẋ1 = x2 (20)
˜ The robust function vs2 is then chosen to satisfy the following
θ1 ẋ2 = v − θ2 x2 − θ3 Sf (x2 ) + θ4 − θ̃5 u |u| − θ̃6 u3 + d.
robust performance conditions:
(10) 1) p{vs2 − d˜0 + d˜∗ (t)} ≤ η
Define the tracking error e = x1 − xd (t) and a switching- 2) pvs2 ≤ 0 (21)
function-like quantity p as
where η is a design parameter that can be arbitrarily small. One
p = ė + k1 e = x2 − x2eq , x2eq = ẋd − k1 e (11) smooth example of vs2 satisfying (21) is
e(s) 1 1 ˆ
where k1 > 0 is a positive gain. Since Gp (s) = p(s) = s+k 1
is a vs2 = −ks2 p, ks2 = (dm ax + θM ϕd + δd )2 (22)
stable transfer function, the rest of the control design is to make 4η
p as small as possible. Differentiating (11) and noting (10), one in which θM = θm ax − θm in .
CHEN et al.: ACCURATE MOTION CONTROL OF LINEAR MOTORS WITH ADAPTIVE ROBUST COMPENSATION 1125

Theorem 1: Consider the parameter estimates θ̂ updated by the
projection-type adaptation law (7) and the dynamic compensa-
tion dˆ0 updated by (19). Regardless the adaptation function τ to
be chosen, the DCDIARC law given by (13) and (9) guarantees
that all signals are bounded. Furthermore, the positive-definite
function Vs defined by
t+T
1 1
Vs = θ1 p2 + θ1 k12 e2 (23)
2 2
is bounded above by
η the robust performance results stated in Theorem 1, asymptotic
Vs (t) ≤ exp(−λt)Vs (0) + [1 − exp(−λt)] (24)
λ output tracking is also achieved, i.e., e → 0 as t → ∞.
where λ = min{2k2 /θ1m ax , k1 }
All the theorems in this paper can be proved using the same
techniques as in [8] and [9] and the details are omitted.
C. Parameter Estimation
Regardless the estimation function τ to be used, the proposed
DCDIARC law achieves a guaranteed transient and final track-
ing performance even in the presence of uncertain nonlinearities,
as shown in the previous sections. Thus, this section focuses on
the construction of suitable estimation functions τ so that good
online parameter estimates can be achieved as well for an im-
proved steady-state tracking accuracy. As such, in this section,
uncertain nonlinearities are assumed to disappear after a finite
time t0 , i.e., assuming d˜ = 0, ∀t ≥ t0 in (4).
To reduce the effect of measurement noises and avoid the need
of acceleration feedback, a stable filter Hf (s) with a relative
degree no less than 1 is used. Namely, applying the filter to both
sides of (4) and noting the assumption of d˜ = 0, one obtains
uf = −ϕTf θ (25)
where •f represents the filtered value of •, and the regressor is
ϕTf = [−ẋ2f , −x2f , −Sf f , 1f , u |u|f , u3f ].
Defining the prediction output and the prediction error as
Theorem 2: Consider the situation where only parametric
uncertainties exist after a finite time t0 , i.e., d˜ = 0, ∀t ≥ t0 .
Using the same DCDIARC law as in Theorem 1 but with the
least-squares-type estimation function (28) and the adaptation
rate matrix (27), if the following persistent excitation condition
is satisfied:
ϕf ϕTf dτ ≥ βIp , ∀t > t0 for some T > 0 and β > 0
t
(29)
then θ̂ converges to its true value θ. Consequently, in addition to
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
A. Experimental Setup
The two-axes commercial Anorad Gantry by Rockwell
Automation setup at Zhejiang University and described in [17] is
used as a testbed. Both axes of the gantry are powered by Anorad
LC-50-200 iron core linear motors. The maximum thrust force
for each axis is 632 N and the continuous force is 279 N. The
position sensors of the gantry are two linear encoders with a
resolution of 0.5 μm. The velocity signal is obtained by the dif-
ference of two consecutive position measurements. The exper-
iments have been conducted on both axes with a 5-kg payload
mounted on the gantry and the control algorithms are imple-
mented in real time through a dSPACE CLP1103 controller
board as detailed in [17].
B. System Identification
First, offline parameter identification is carried out without
considering nonlinear electromagnetic field effect. For small
driving coil current, this linear assumption is reasonable and the
nominal model for identification can be rewritten as
θ1 ẋ2 = u − θ2 x2 − θ3 Sf (x2 ) + θ4 . (30)

ûf = −ϕTf θ̂ Standard least squares identification is performed [17], and

it is found that nominal values of the system parameters
ε = ûf − uf = −ϕTf θ̃. (26) are θ1 = 0.19, θ2 = 0.16, and θ3 = 0.31 for X-axis and θ1 =
0.61, θ2 = 0.23, and θ3 = 0.15 for Y-axis. θ4 represents the
With this static linear regression model, various well-known lumped uncertainties of each axis and is normally close to 0.
estimation algorithms can be used to identify unknown param- Explicit measurement of nonlinear electromagnetic force has
eters θ. For example, with the modified least squares estimation been done by blocking the motor and using an external force
algorithm as in [9], the resulting adaptation law is given by (7), sensor (HBM U10M Force Transducer with AE101 Ampli-
in which Γ(t) is updated by fier) to measure the thrust forces at different input voltages.
⎧ Accurate fitting results of X-axis and Y-axis between input
⎨ αΓ − 1
Γϕf ϕTf Γ, if λm ax (Γ(t)) ≤ ρM voltage and thrust force are achieved by such cubic poly-
Γ̇ = 1 + νϕTf Γϕf
⎩ nomials in Figs. 1 and 2. The identified parameters in (3)
0, otherwise
(27) are A1 = 73.34, A2 = −0.5571, and A3 = −0.07888 for X-
where α is the forgetting factor, ν ≥ 0 with ν = 0 leading to axis and A1 = 78.29, A2 = −1.455, and A3 = −0.02332 for
the unnormalized algorithm, ρM is the preset upper bound for Y-axis. Since A2 and A3 are relatively very small, the mathe-
Γ(t) to avoid the estimator windup, and the adaptation func- matical model of (3) can be linearly approximated by (2) when
tion τ is defined as thrust force is below continuous force of 279 N, as shown by
the dashed lines in Figs. 1 and 2. For larger input, the nonlinear
1 electromagnetic field effect is obvious and can be captured well
τ= ϕf ε. (28)
1 + νϕTf Γϕf
1126 IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 18, NO. 3, JUNE 2013

Position(m)
800 0.4
0.3
Asterisk: experimental data 0.2
700 Solid: cubic polynomial fitting 0.1
Dashed: linear approximation of the fitting 0
600 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Thrust Force (N)

Velocity(m/s)
2
500
1
0
400 −1
−2
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
300

Acceleration(m/s )
2
40
200 20
0
100 −20
−40
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
0 Time(s)
0 2 4 6 8 10
Input Voltage(V) Fig. 3. Point-to-point motion trajectory.

Fig. 1. Fitting result of nonlinear electromagnetic force of X-axis.

800
ks = 500 × 0.19, k1 = 250. For the fast compensation term va2 ,
Asterisk: experimental data
700 the two parameters are set as γd = 500 and dˆm ax = 1. The con-
Solid: cubic polynomial fitting
Dashed: linear approximation of the fitting
tinuous function Sf (ẋd ) is chosen as π2 arctan(900ẋd ). Namely,
600 the lower and upper bounds of the parameter variations for θ are
chosen as θm in = [0.05, 0.08, 0.05, −0.5, −0.015, −0.002]T
Thrust Force (N)

500 and θm ax = [0.25, 0.45, 0.35, 0.5, −0.004, −0.0005]T , respec-

400
300
200
100
0 The trajectory shown in Fig. 3 has a travel movement of 0.4 m,
0 2 4 6
Input Voltage(V)
Fig. 2. Fitting result of nonlinear electromagnetic force of Y-axis.
by the identified results of (3). It is also easily shown that (3) is
strictly monotonic when the input voltage is less than 10 V.
C. Comparative Experimental Results for X-axis
For the X-axis control experiment, the dSPACE controller’s
sampling frequency is selected as fs = 5 kHz. The following
two control algorithms are compared:
C1: DCDIARC without nonlinear electromagnetic force com-
pensation;
C2: DCDIARC with nonlinear electromagnetic force compen-
sation.
For a fair comparison, all the controller parameters of these
two algorithms are chosen to be the same when they have the
same physical meanings. As in [14], a nonlinear robust feed-
back gain of the following form is used for vs . Choose a
nonlinear feedback gain ks large enough, and thus, the con-
trol function vs = −ks p satisfies (13). In the experiments, for
both control algorithms, the following control gains are used:
tively. The least-squares-type estimation algorithm (28) and (27)
is implemented, with α = 0.02, μ = 0.1, ρM = 1000, and the
initial adaptation rates Γ(0) = diag{2, 50, 100, 500, 0.5, 0.05}.
The initial parameter estimates are chosen as θ(0)  =
[0.15, 0.2, 0.1, 0, −0.0076, −0.0011]T . The filter function
Hf (s) is set as τf = 0.004 and a relative degree equal to 2.
As in [14] and [17], point-to-point movements, which are typ-
ical in manufacture industry, are used as the desired trajectory.
8 10
a maximum velocity of 2 m/s, and a maximum acceleration of
38 m/s2 .
The control input is shown in Fig. 4. With a 5-kg payload
on the linear motor and the high acceleration/deceleration dur-
ing the start and the end of the point-to-point movement, the
corresponding control input is almost near the physical limit of
±10V. The resulting forces are much larger than the continuous
force limit in Fig. 1 and the nonlinear electromagnetic field ef-
fect is obvious. Fig. 5 shows the tracking error of two algorithms,
with the magnified plot over a single running period shown in
Fig. 6. It can be seen from these error plots that both algorithms
have equally very good steady-state and constant-speed track-
ing performance, demonstrating the high-performance nature
of ARC algorithms. Table I shows the tracking performance of
X-axis by quantitative measures, where eM , eF , L2 [e], and uM
represent maximal transient tracking error, final tracking accu-
racy, the L2 norm of tracking error, and maximal control input,
respectively. The detailed definitions of these performance in-
dexes can be found in [1] and [14]. It is seen that the tracking
errors during the acceleration and deceleration periods are fur-
ther reduced when the proposed electromagnetic nonlinearity
compensation is used—almost in half from 65.5 to 37.6 μm
during the first cycle and from 44.4 to 28.1 μm during the last
CHEN et al.: ACCURATE MOTION CONTROL OF LINEAR MOTORS WITH ADAPTIVE ROBUST COMPENSATION 1127

TABLE I
Compensantion(V) Compensantion(V)

10 TRACKING PERFORMANCE OF X-AXIS BY QUANTITATIVE MEASURES

Input without

5
Algorithms eM (µ m) eF (µ m) L2 [e] (µ m) uM (V )
0 C1 65.5 44.4 4.54 9.55
−5 C2 37.6 28.1 3.40 9.85
−10
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

Estimate of θ1
10 0.2
Input with

5 0.18
0 0.16
−5 0.14
−10 0 20 40 60 80 100 120
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

5
Estimate of θ
Time(s) 0
−0.005
Fig. 4. Control input of two control algorithms (X-axis).
−0.01
−0.015
Compensantion(μm) Compensantion(μm)

0 20 40 60 80 100 120
40 Time(s)
Error without

−3

6
20 x 10

Estimate of θ
0 −0.5
−20 −1
−40 −1.5
−60
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
−2
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Time(s)
40
Fig. 7. Estimation of parameters of θ1 , θ5 , and θ6 (X-axis).
Error with

20
0
−20
−40
2
Estimate of θ

−60 0.25
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Time(s) 0.2
Fig. 5. Tracking errors of two control algorithms (X-axis).
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Estimate of θ3
Compensantion(μm) Compensantion(μm)

0.4
40
Error without

20 0.2
0
−20 0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
−40
Time(s)
Estimate of θ4

22 22.5 23 23.5 24 24.5 25 25.5

0.1

40 0
Error with

20
−0.1
0 0 20 40 60 80 100 120
−20 Time(s)
−40
22 22.5 23 23.5 24 24.5 25 25.5 Fig. 8. Estimation of parameters of θ2 , θ3 , and θ4 (X-axis).
Time(s)

Fig. 6. Magnification of tracking errors over one running period (X-axis). TABLE II
TRACKING PERFORMANCE OF Y-AXIS BY QUANTITATIVE MEASURES

cycle. The reduced peak transient tracking errors over the cycles Algorithms eM (µ m) eF (µ m) L2 [e] (µ m) uM (V )
also demonstrate the usefulness of online parameter adaptation. C1 75.4 66.1 9.14 9.32
C2 39.1 35.0 5.90 9.60
Figs. 7 and 8 show the parameter estimation history of C2. It
is clear that the online parameter estimates do converge to their
offline identified values over cycles even with significant initial
parameter estimation errors. All these results confirm the excel- C1 and 0.014 ms for C2, which is relatively very short when
lent tracking performance and accurate parameter estimation of compared to the sampling period 0.2 ms. The results show that
the proposed algorithm. The computational loads of two control the complexities of both algorithms are acceptable, validating
algorithms are also tested. The turnaround time is 0.010 ms for their use in practical applications.
1128 IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 18, NO. 3, JUNE 2013

2
Compensantion(μm) Compensantion(μm)

Estimate of θ
0.4
Error without

50 0.2

0 0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
−50

3
Estimate of θ
0.4
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
0.2

0
50 0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Error with

Time(s)

4
Estimate of θ
0 0.05

−50 0

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 −0.05
Time(s) 0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Time(s)
Fig. 9. Tracking errors of two control algorithms (Y-axis).
Fig. 12. Estimation of parameters of θ2 , θ3 , and θ4 , Y-axis.
Compensantion(μm) Compensantion(μm)

algorithms. The initial parameter estimates are θ(0)  =

Error without

50
[0.55, 0.2, 0.1, 0, −0.0186, −0.0003] , and the initial adapta-
T
0
tion rates are Γ(0) = diag{2, 50, 100, 500, 0.05, 0.005}. Other
−50 control sets are the same as the X-axis control experiments. A
21.5 22 22.5 23 23.5 24 24.5 25 25.5 desired trajectory with the maximum velocity of 1 m/s and the
maximum acceleration of 10 m/s2 is used here.
Similarly, the experimental results in terms of the quantita-
50
tive indexes are given in Table II, and the tracking error and
Error with

0 parameter estimates are shown in Figs. 9–12. All these Y-axis

−50
control results confirm the excellent tracking nature of ARC
algorithms and the significantly improved control performance
21.5 22 22.5 23 23.5 24 24.5 25 25.5
Time(s) of the proposed electromagnetic nonlinearity compensation.

Fig. 10. Magnification of tracking errors over one running period (Y-axis). V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, approximation of electromagnetic nonlinearity
1
Estimate of θ

0.6 by cubic polynomials with unknown weights was proposed and

0.55 the effectiveness of the approximation has been verified via of-
0.5
fline identification experiments as well. A desired compensation
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 DIARC control algorithm with adaptive robust compensation of
nonlinear electromagnetic field effect was subsequently devel-
Estimate of θ5

−0.015
oped for accurate motion control of linear motors. The unknown
−0.02 weights and other system parameters are tuned online via certain
−0.025 adaptation law to obtain a better model compensation. Theoret-
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Time(s) ically, the proposed ARC algorithm achieves a guaranteed tran-
−3
sient and steady-state performance for position tracking, as well
Estimate of θ6

x 10
0
as zero steady-state tracking error when the system is subjected
−0.5
to parametric uncertainties only. Comparative experiments have
−1 been conducted on a biaxial Anorad gantry system. The results
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Time(s) show that the proposed ARC algorithm achieves better tracking
performance than existing ones, validating the effectiveness of
Fig. 11. Estimation of parameters of θ1 , θ5 , and θ6 (Y-axis).
the proposed approach in practical applications.

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Zheng Chen (S’11) received the B.Eng degree from
Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, in 2007,
where he is currently working toward the Ph.D. de-
gree in mechatronic control engineering.
He was a Visiting Scholar in the School of
Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, West
Lafayette, IN, from 2008 to 2010.
Bin Yao (S’92–M’96–SM’09) received the B.Eng.
degree in applied mechanics from the Beijing Univer-
sity of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Beijing, China
in 1987, the M.Eng. degree in electrical engineering
from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore,
in 1992, and the Ph.D. degree in mechanical engi-
neering from the University of California at Berkeley
in 1996.
He has been with the School of Mechanical Engi-
neering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, since
1996, and was promoted to the rank of Professor in
2007. He was honored as a Kuang-Piu Professor in 2005 and a Changjiang
Chair Professor at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, by the Ministry of
Education of China in 2010 as well. More detailed information can be found at
https://engineering.purdue.edu/∼byao.
Qingfeng Wang (M’11) received the M.Eng. and
Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from Zhe-
jiang University, Hangzhou, China, in 1988 and 1994,
respectively.
He then became a faculty member at Zhejiang
University where he was promoted to the rank of Pro-
fessor in 1999. He was the Director of the State Key
Laboratory of Fluid Power Transmission and Con-
trol, Zhejiang University, from 2001 to 2005, where
he currently serves as the Head of the Institute of
Mechatronic Control Engineering. His research in-
terests include electrohydraulic control components and systems, hybrid power
systems and energy saving techniques for construction machinery, and system
synthesis for mechatronic equipment.