Comparison of Estimator-Based Compensation Schemes

for Hydrostatic Transmissions with Uncertainties

Dang Ngoc Danh and Harald Aschemann

Abstract— In this paper, the achievable tracking performance

of a decentralized control scheme of a hydrostatic transmission
is investigated for three alternative estimators in combination
with output feedback linearization: a state and disturbance
observer, an adaptive parameter estimator and a neural net-
work. All these estimators address the given disturbances and
uncertainty in the hydraulic system and contribute to the
robustness of the feedback linearization as well the tracking
accuracy. Firstly, the three control schemes are evaluated by
means of simulations and, secondly, validated by experiments
on a dedicated test rig at the Chair of Mechatronics, University
of Rostock. Fig. 1. Principle configuration of a hydrostatic transmission system.

I. I NTRODUCTION
A hydrostatic transmission system typically consists of
two main components – a hydraulic pump and a hydraulic
motor, each with variable volumetric displacement – that are
connected by hydraulic hoses in a closed hydraulic circuit.
The pump is driven by an electric motor or a combustion
engine, which supplies mechanical power to the system. This
power is converted to hydraulic power – volume flow times
pressure – and transmitted to the hydraulic motor, where it
is converted back to mechanical power at the output shaft.
Hydrostatic transmissions are used in classical industrial
applications like heavy working machines, construction and
agriculture vehicles but also in recent applications such
as power-split gearboxes and off-road vehicles, cf. [1], as
well as wind turbines, cf. [2]. Hydrostatic transmissions
offer many advantages in comparison to purely mechanical
solutions: they provide a continuously variable transmission
ratio, a high power density, a directional reversion without
changing gears, and it is able to serve as a wearless braking
system, cf. [1]. The most popular form of a hydrostatic
pump and motor involves a design with axial pistons. With
a changing swash-plate angle of the hydraulic pump and a
changing bent angle of the hydraulic motor, the transmission
ratio can be varied by means of displacement units. As a
result, both the motor torque and angular velocity of motor
output shaft can be adjusted. Beside many advantages like the
flexible geometrical arrangement and the operation principle
that let hydrostatic transmissions become a new trend in
industry, energy efficiency and control issues still need to be
addressed. From a control point of view, sophisticated control
approaches are required because hydrostatic transmissions
are characterized by nonlinear differential equations and,
Dang Ngoc Danh and Harald Aschemann are with the
Chair of Mechatronics, University of Rostock, Justus-von-
Liebig-Weg 6, Rostock D-18059, Germany, {Ngoc.Dang,
Harald.Aschemann}@uni-rostock.de.
moreover, are affected by load disturbances and unavoid-
able parameter uncertainty. Model uncertainty is physically
related, for example, to variations in the fluid temperature, to
kinematic viscosity, to the elasticity of the hydraulic hoses,
and the leakage oil flow, cf. [3].
In current industrial practice, gain-scheduled PID con-
trollers are still the typical choice to control hydrostatic
transmissions, cf. [4]. Nevertheless, if higher performance
demands are to be fulfilled, many nonlinear control ap-
proaches have proven advantageous and have been success-
fully validated in the last decade, see [5] for a general
overview and a comprehensive list of references. Regarding
the control structure, both centralized and decentralized
topologies are applicable and enable an accurate tracking
control. The decentralized control of the motor bent angle
and the motor angular velocity, see [5], outperformed the
centralized topology. The achievable tracking performance is
higher, and the implementation is simpler in direct compar-
ison to the centralized approach, see [5] for further details.
In this study, the control-oriented model of a hydrostatic
transmission is presented in Sec. II. A decentralized scheme
discussed in Sec. III serves as the basis for the investigation
of alternative estimators – a state and disturbance observer,
an adaptive parameter estimator and a neural network –
employed for the feedback linearization of the nonlinear sys-
tem. The estimator-based approaches considered in Sec. IV
are meant to cancel uncertain nonlinear terms as well as
to compensate for disturbances. A comparison is performed
in Sec. V by means of both simulation and corresponding
experiments. Successful experiments at the test rig validate
the concept and show that all variants are applicable and,
moreover, allow for an accurate trajectory tracking. Conclu-
sions and a short outlook finish the paper in Sec. VI.

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 C. Dynamics of the displacement units
The dynamics of the displacement units, which represent
the actuators of the hydrostatic transmission and which are
responsible for changing the swash-plate angle and the bent
axis angle, cover the relationships between normalized tilt
angles and the input signals. They can be described by first-
order lag systems as follows

Fig. 2. Hydrostatic transmission test rig at Chair of Mechatronics,

TuP α̃˙ P + α̃P = kP uP ,
(4)
University of Rostock. TuM α̃˙ M + α̃M = kM uM .
Here, TuP/uM are the time constants. kP,M are proportional
gains and uP/M are normalized input signals of the pump
II. M ATHEMATICAL M ODEL OF H YDROSTATIC
and motor actuators. Due to given limits of the mechanical
T RANSMISSION S YSTEM
design, the actuator dynamics is subject to saturation. In this
The overall system comprises two physical domains: a study, for the sake of simplicity, the saturation is not con-
hydraulic subsystem and a mechanical subsystem, cf. [5]. sidered explicitly in system model but is addressed properly
The hydraulic subsystem characterizes the pressure dynamics by the planning of feasible desired trajectories.
of the hydraulic oil, whereas the mechanical subsystem Combining all subsystems, the overall system can be de-
describes the dynamics of motor output shaft. scribed by a fourth-order nonlinear state-space representation
⎡ ⎤ ⎡ − TuM
1
α̃M + TkuM
M
uM
⎤
A. Pressure dynamics α̃˙ M
⎢ α̃˙ P ⎥ ⎢ − T1uP α̃P + TkuP
P ⎥
⎥=⎢ ⎥
uP
Assuming small values of the pump swash-plate angle ⎢ . (5)
⎣ Δ ṗ ⎦ ⎣ 2 ṼP α̃P ωP − 2 ṼM α̃M ωM − qu ⎥
⎢
(|αP | ≤ 18o ) and of the motor bent axis angle (αM ≤ 20o ), CH CH CH ⎦
the corresponding volume flow rates of pump and motor can ω̇M − dJVV ωM + ṼJVM Δpα̃M − JτVu
be approximately expressed by
III. D ECENTRALIZED C ONTROL S CHEME
qP = ṼP α̃P ωP ,
(1) In the decentralized control scheme, the overall system dy-
qM = ṼM α̃M ωM .
namics is partitioned into two subsystems: the first subsystem
Here, ωP/M are the angular velocities of pump and motor. corresponds to the differential equation for the motor bent
The variable α̃P , which is limited to the interval α̃P ∈ [−1, 1], axis angle, whereas the second one comprises the remaining
represents the normalized swash-plate angle. The variable last differential equations and serves for the control of the
α̃M ∈ [εM , 1], with εM > 0, denotes the normalized bent axis motor angular velocity.
angle. ṼP/M stand for the volumetric displacements of the
pump and the motor, respectively. For practical reasons,
D Md uM

Hydrostatic Transmission
the pressure dynamics is reduced to the dynamics of the D M - Controller
difference pressure between the high pressure and the low
Abc
F9

pressure side. Assuming symmetric conditions and neglect- 'p

ing the pressure losses in the hydraulic hoses, the differential Dˆ M Observer
ZM
equation for the difference pressure becomes
2  qu 
ZMd
Δ ṗ = ṼP α̃P ωP − ṼM α̃M ωM − . (2) ZM - Controller uP
CH 2
Here, CH denotes the hydraulic capacitance, where qu is a Fig. 3. Decentralized control scheme with an observer for the reconstruc-
disturbance resulting from unknown leakage flows in the tion of unmeasurable parameter.
physical system.

B. Equation of motion A. Control of normalized bent axis angle

The dynamics of the motor angular velocity is governed
by the following equation of motion
JV ω̇M + dV ωM = ṼM Δpα̃M − τu .
Here, JV is mass moment of inertia, and dV denotes the
velocity proportional damping coefficient at the rotational
output shaft. The variable τu stands for an unknown load
disturbance torque.
A flatness-based controller, see [6] for an overview of
this design method, is developed for the normalized motor
bent axis angle, cf. [7]. Solving the first differential equation
(3) (5) for the input signal uM and introducing the first time
derivative as stabilizing control input υM = α̃˙ M results in the
inverse dynamics
α̃M + υM TuM
uM = . (6)
kM

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The stabilizing control law υM is chosen as three ⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤
ẋ1 x2
ẋ = ⎣ ẋ2 ⎦ = ⎣ x3 ⎦ .
t
(11)
υM = α̃Md + kα0 (α̃Md − α̃M ) + kα1 (α̃Md − α̃M ) dτ, (7) ẋ3 υ
0
Now, the error dynamics can be stabilized by a Lyapunov-
where kα0 > 0 and kα1 > 0 are positive coefficients. The based control as proposed in [8]. In the given case of a ref-
desired trajectory α̃Md is designed in compliance with all erence tracking problem, a Lyapunov function is introduced
constraints and remains in the range [εM , 1]. This control as follows
requires the feedback of α̃M , which it is not directly measur- 2
able; therefore, an observer is used to provide an estimate α̃ˆ M s2 d
V (s) = , s= +λ e = ë + 2λ ė + λ 2 e. (12)
of α̃M , which is used for feedback control and, moreover, for 2 dt
a gain-scheduling in the decentralized control of the motor Here, λ > 0 represents a positive design parameter, and e =
angular velocity. ωM −ωMd is the tracking error based on the desired trajectory
ωMd . The time derivative of s becomes
B. Control of motor angular velocity
... ... ...
Many approaches have already been investigated and val- ṡ = e + 2λ ë + λ 2 ė = ω M − ω Md + 2λ ë + λ 2 ė. (13)
idated for the nonlinear control of angular velocity of the The stabilizing control law υ is now chosen as
motor, cf. [5] for an overview. In this paper, the system ... ...
is first feedback-linearized using estimator-based techniques υ = ẋ3 = ω M = ω Md − 2λ ë − λ 2 ė − ks, (14)
and, subsequently, a Lyapunov-based control is deployed for where k > 0 represents a positive constant. Rearranging (14)
the tracking control. The design is based on the dynamics of yields
the subsystem, where α̃M is considered as a gain-scheduling ... ...
ω M − ω Md + 2λ ë + λ 2 ė + ks = 0, (15)
parameter
⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤ which is equivalent to the first-order dynamics ṡ + ks = 0
α̃˙ P − T1uP α̃P + TkuP
P
uP and guarantees an exponential convergence towards s = 0.
⎣ Δ ṗ ⎦ = ⎢ 2 2 qu ⎥
⎣ CH ṼP α̃P ωP − CH ṼM α̃M ωM − CH ⎦ . (8) The parameters λ > 0 and k > 0 can be employed to adjust
ω̇M − dJVV ωM + ṼJVM Δpα̃M − JτVu the tracking performance.

The output y = ωM represents a flat output of the subsystem,

which can be easily shown by repeated time differentiation. Z
Md 

The control input uP appears first in the third time derivative, ª¬ 0 O 2 2O º¼
Abc
F9

indicating a relative degree of three. With the introduction of

new state variables x1 = ω, x2 = ω̇, x3 = ω̈ and substitutions ª¬ O 2 2O 1º¼ k 

X

according to (8), the system can be stated in controller 

normal form
ªZMd º
«Z Md » >Z , Z M , ZM @
T

ẋ1 = x2 «¬ZMd »¼ M

ẋ2 = x3
2ṼM2 α̃M
2 2ṼM2 α̃M
2 dV Fig. 4. Stabilizing control law based on a Lyapunov function.
ẋ3 = − x1 − + x2 (9)
JV CH TuP JV CH JV TuP
In the sequel, several estimators are investigated that allow
dV 1 ṼM α̃M 2ṼM α̃MṼP ωP kP for addressing uncertainties in the feedback linearization
− + x3 − qu + uP .
JV TuP JV CH TuP JV CH TuP approach: a state and disturbance observer, an adaptive
Obviously, the relative degree equals the subsystem order parameter estimator and a neural network that is trained
and, hence, no internal dynamics exists. Provided that all online. All of these estimators are capable of rendering the
system parameters and the disturbance input qu are perfectly feedback linearization robustly stable. Thereby, a superior
known, the system can be easily feedback-linearized by com- behaviour is expected in comparison to classical schemes
pensating all nonlinearities. This is achieved by introducing that assume a perfect model knowledge.
a new input υ according to IV. E STIMATOR -BASED F EEDBACK L INEARIZATION
2ṼM2 α̃M
2 2ṼM2 α̃M
2dV The system is feedback-linearized by using an inverse
υ =− x1 − + x2
JV CH TuP JV CH JV TuP dynamics of the form
dV 1 ṼM α̃M 2ṼM α̃MṼP ωP kP uP = g · [υ − f (x, qu )] . (16)
− + x3 − qu + uP .
JV TuP JV CH TuP JV CH TuP
(10) The Lyapunov-based design of the stabilizing control law
Solving this definition for the physical input uP yields the (14) achieves a good tracking behaviour if the system non-
corresponding inverse dynamics. As a result, the feedback- linearities are compensated for appropriately. This requires
linearized system (9) becomes an integrator chain of length a reconstruction of the uncertain function f (x, qu ), which

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depends on the state vector x, the leakage volume flow qu Solving (22) for the unknown function Φ leads to
as disturbance and unavoidable model uncertainty. Similar
Φ (ym , τ, u) = τ̇ − Hẏm . (22)
ideas have been investigated in work of [9] on model-free
control. Consequently, the current value of f (x, qu ) must Substituting τ̇ and ẏm from (5) into (22) and considering the
be determined online according to the changes in the state integrator disturbance model τ̇d = 0 results in
variables, the external disturbances and the given model ⎡ ⎤
− TuM
1
α̃M + TkuM
M
uM
uncertainty. A nonlinear reduced-order observer is used to
⎢ − 1 α̃ + kP u ⎥
Φ (ym , τ, u) = ⎢ ⎣
TuP P TuP P ⎥
⎦
0
uM (23)

Hydrostatic Transmission
Abc
F9

 2 0 
q
ṼP α̃P ωP − C2H ṼM α̃M ωM − CHu
X 
g
uP −HT CH dV .
− JV ωM + ṼJVM Δpα̃M − JτVu

Dˆ M Asymptotic stability of the linearized error dynamics is
f (x, qu ) achieved by placing all the eigenvalues of the Jacobian in
>ZM , Z M , ZM @
T the left complex half-plane
x
∂ Φ (ym , τ, u) . 4
det sI − = ∏ (s + si ) . (24)
Fig. 5. Estimator-based feedback linearization for the trajectory tracking ∂τ i=1
of the motor angular velocity.
With the four design specifications s1/2/3/4 > 0 – corre-
estimate the unknown state variables and external disturbance sponding to eigenvalues with a negative real part –, the four
affecting the system. The estimated state variables – α̃M/P – unknown observer gains in the matrix H can be directly de-
are required in all three control structures under consideration termined from a comparison of the characteristic polynomial
because direct measurements are not available at the test rig. with the desired one according to (24).

A. Nonlinearity compensation using a disturbance observer B. Nonlinearity compensation by online parameter estima-
tion
In the first approach – a compensation scheme based
The inverse dynamics for the online parameter estimation
on a disturbance observer (DO) as proposed in [10] – the
is modified in the following form
measured angular velocity, their first two time derivatives
and the estimate q̂u for a unknown volume flow qu are used 3

in the feedback linearization uP = â0 · g · υ + ∑ âi · fi (x) + â4 . (25)

i=1
uP = g · [υ − f (x, q̂u )]. (17) The parameters in the inverse dynamics (25) – âi , i ∈
{0, 1, 2, 3, 4} – are considered to be unknown in the sequel
The output equation of the observer reads and are estimated online by methods proposed in [8]. The
  
x̂e H1 z1 nominal model with a vanishing disturbance qu = 0 corre-
= ym + , (18) sponds to the values âi = 1, i ∈ {0, 1, 2, 3} and â4 = 0. The
τ̂d H2 z2
appropriate modification of (10) and the solution for uP leads
where ym = [Δp, ωM ]T denotes the vector of measurable to
output variables. The vector x̂e contains the estimates for JV CH TuP ṼM α̃M
the normalized tilt angles xe = [α̃P , α̃M ]T , and τ̂d is the uP = â0 υ + â1 ωM
2ṼM α̃MṼP ωP kP ṼP ωP kP
estimate
 T of the
 disturbance vector τ̂d = [qu , τu ]T . The matrix
T TuPṼM α̃M CH dV
H = H1 , HT2 contains the observer gains and is chosen as +â2 + ω̇M (26)
ṼP ωP kP 2ṼM α̃MṼP ωP kP
T
h11 0 h31 0 CH TuP dV JV CH
H= . (19) +â3 + ω̈M + â4 ,
0 h22 0 h42 2ṼM α̃MṼP ωP kP 2ṼM α̃MṼP ωP kP
 T
The internal state vector z = zT1 , zT2 of the reduced-order with the state vector x = [x1 , x2 , x3 ]T = [ωM , ω̇M , ω̈M ]T . Ob-
observer is obtained from the solution of the following state viously, (26) can be written in the form of (25)
equations uP = â0 · g · υ + â1 · f1 (x) + â2 · f2 (x) + â3 · f3 (x) + â4 . (27)
Φ (ym , τ̂, u) .
ż =Φ (20)
 T T T  T T T Note that this representation is linear in the parameters to
Here, τ̂ = x̂e , τ̂d provides the estimates for τ = xe , τd be estimated. Following the suggestion in [8], the adaptation
and u = [uP , uM ]T represents the control input vector. The laws are chosen as follows
vector function Φ follows from the design condition that the â˙0 = −γ0 · sign(â0 ) · s · υ ,
steady-state observer error vanishes
â˙i = −γi · sign(â0 ) · s · fi (x), i = 1, 2, 3 , (28)
τ̃˙ = τ̇ − τ̂˙ = 0 = τ̇ − Hẏm −Φ
Φ (ym , τ, u) . (21) â˙4 = −γ4 · sign(â0 ) · s.

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Here, the adaptation rates γ0/1/2/3/4 should be chosen rea- compensation. All these structures use state estimates for
sonably small, see [8] for more details. The variable s the unmeasurable tilt angles, the same stabilizing control
corresponds to the argument of the Lyapunov function V (s) law – however with individual parametrizations. The time
in (12). derivatives of the motor angular velocity are obtained by
numerical differentiation from output measurements.
C. Nonlinearity compensation by a neural network In this paper, for the sake of simplicity, the feasible desired
Starting point the nonlinearity compensation is again trajectories for α̃Md and ωMd are generated in such a way
the system representation in controller normal form (9). as to avoid actuator saturation and to fulfil the requirements
Moreover, the desired trajectory yd = [ωMd , ω̇Md , ω̈Md ]T is regarding differentiability.
generated satisfying the condition yd   Q, where Q is
a known bound. Under the realistic assumption that the
disturbance volume flow qu is bounded as well, the nonlinear
function f (x, qu ) can be approximated by a neural network
in the form of a multilayer perceptron (MLP), cf. [11] and
[12]. This leads to the following inverse dynamics
uP = g · [υ − F (x)] . (29)
Fig. 6. Desired trajectory for the motor tilt angle α̃Md
A single output with one hidden layer neural network can
be stated in a general form as follows
     T 
F(x) = σ wT σ vT1 xa , ..., σ vTL xa . (30)

Here, σ represents an activation function, which is specified

below. Moreover, w is a weighting vector belonging to the
output layer, whereas V = [v1 , ..., vL ] is a weighting matrix of
the hidden
 layer. The augmented input vector is denoted by
T
xa = 1, xT with 1 corresponding to the bias of the neurons.
In this paper, a linear activation function is employed for the Fig. 7. Desired trajectory for the motor angular velocity ωMd [rad/s]
output layer, and a sigmoid function is used for hidden layer.
The neural network for nonlinearity approximation can now Fig. 8 depicts simulation results for the unmeasurable state
be described in more detail as follows variable α̃M , which needs to be estimated by the observer.
It can be seen that the estimate matches quite well the
L  T 
F (x) = ∑ w jσ v j xa , (31) simulated values. Consequently, it can be employed for
feedback control.
j=1

with σ (xi ) = (1 + e−xi )−1 . L is the total number of neurons,

w j the j −th element of w, and v j denotes the j −th column
of V that contains the weights of j − th neuron. The weights
of the neural network can be collected in an augmented
weighting matrix

V 0
Θ= . (32)
0 w
Under the assumption that Θ  θm holds, where θm is a
known upper bound, the neural network can be tuned in such
a way that both the tracking performance and the estimator
stability are guaranteed, see [11] for details. The tuning rules
as proposed by [11] are given by
     
ẇ j = M σ vTj xa −σ  vTj xa v j T xa s−κ |s| Mw j ,
  (33)
v̇ j = Nsxa w j σ  vTj xa −κ |s| Nv j ,
where M, N and κ are positive constants.
V. C OMPARISON OF THE THREE ESTIMATOR SCHEMES
A. Simulation results
The implemented control structures represent a combi-
nation of the stabilizing tracking control law (14) and
one of three approaches to an estimator-based nonlinearity
Fig. 8. Comparison of simulated and estimated values for α̃Md .
Fig. 9 shows the comparison of the tracking errors for the
motor angular velocity for the three alternatives used for an
estimator-based nonlinearity compensation: neural network
(NN), online parameter estimation (PE) and disturbance
observer (DO). To render the simulation results realistic,
white noise is added to the measured angular velocity and
the measured pressure in the simulation model, respectively.
The simulation shows that all three approaches for hydro-
static transmission yield similar results, the tracking errors
are small. A numerical comparison is stated in Table I.
B. Experimental results
The controllers are implemented on the hydrostatic trans-
mission test rig and evaluated in experiments. The corre-
sponding results for the tracking errors are depicted in Fig. 10

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 TABLE I
C OMPARISON OF ERROR MEASURES ( SIMULATION RESULTS ).
NN PE DO
Max. error in rad/s 0.2712 0.2874 0.2803
RMS error in rad/s 0.06186 0.08527 0.07067
Fig. 9. Comparison of the tracking errors eωMd [rad/s] for three alternative
approaches to an estimator-based nonlinearity compensation (simulation
results).
and the numerical values can be found in Table II. As
Fig. 10. Tracking errors eωMd [rad/s] for the alternative approaches to an
estimator-based nonlinearity compensation (experimental results).
indicated by the experimental results, all three compensation
approaches work pretty well, and they can keep the tracking
error small.
The approach with a disturbance observer requires a
complete model of the hydrostatic transmission, and the
control performance depends fully on the accuracy of the
system model, see earlier research in [5] for an overview.
The approach based on an online parameter estimation
also relies on a system model. This model, however, is
parametrized by a set of adaptable parameters that are
optimized online. This adaptation mechanism supports the
controller at tracking the desired trajectory despite external
disturbances and model uncertainty. This concept has been
validated successfully at the test rig and the obtained results
confirm the functionality of the nonlinearity compensation.
This approach also works well with a less accurate model
and can cope with large disturbances and model uncertainty
– at a higher level in comparison to the approach using the
disturbance observer.
For the nonlinearity compensation based on a neural
network, the state-independent part of the model is replaced
by a neural network, which is trained online to compensate
both disturbances and uncertainty affecting in the system.
This approach turned out to allow for an equivalent tracking
performance in comparison with the others variants. Con-
sidering the whole structure of this approach, it can be
clearly seen that a complete model of the system is not
required. Moreover, this nonlinearity compensation showed a
high robustness and proved to be applicable to a hydrostatic
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TABLE II
C OMPARISON OF ERROR MEASURES ( EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS ).
NN PE DO
Max. error in rad/s 0.5469 0.7215 0.5148
RMS error in rad/s 0.1492 0.2044 0.1621
transmission that is subject to external disturbances and
model uncertainty.
VI. C ONCLUSIONS AND O UTLOOK
This paper presents a decentralized control approach for a
hydrostatic transmission, where the motor tilt angle and the
motor angular velocity serve as controlled outputs. Here, the
unmeasurable tilt angles of both pump and motor are recon-
structed with a disturbance observer. Whereas the flatness-
based control of the motor tilt angle is straightforward, the
focus is on the compensation of uncertain terms in the
feedback-linearizing control of the motor angular velocity. A
comparison of the three alternative compensation approaches
– an observer-based approach, an online parameter estima-
tion and a neural network – shows that all of them enable
a comparable and highly accurate tracking behaviour. The
smallest RMSE values in both simulations and experiments
were obtained with the neural network, followed by the state
and disturbance observer and, finally, the online parameter
estimation.
In the near future, the parallel use with identified distur-
bance models as feedforward control action will be investi-
gated. This measure relieves the estimators, which only have
to cope with the deviations from the feedforward term.
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