The application of control systems in precision irrigation is critical to ensure the accurate distribution of water in crops under various uncertainties. Shifts in the loading of the water supply on the control valve can be a significant uncertainty. Changes in weather and the uncertainty of the water level in the reservoir are also challenging issues. Sliding Mode Control (SMC) is a robust control technique that is simple to apply to deal with uncertainty, while Fast Terminal Sliding Mode Control (FTSMC) has the benefit of the rapid convergence. The DC electric motor, which is a common component of electric control valves, can be employed in designing control techniques for precision irrigation applications. This study aims to design a proposed experimental-based method, namely FTSMC for valve regulation under water load uncertainty for precision irrigation application. Modification of the signum function should be used to eliminate the chattering effect in real experiments.The results of experiments showed that the proposed method was superior to the conventional Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) and traditional SMC techniques in terms of overshoot, convergence rate and error. Because of those reasons, the FTSMC approach should be implemented on control valves against load uncertainty in precision irrigation applications.

This paper presents a simple and straightforward design of a discrete-time fractional-order odd-harmonics repetitive controller (RC). Unlike general RC designs, the proposed method utilizes an internal model with a half-period delay and a stabilizing controller with a fractional phase lead compensator. First, the odd-harmonics internal model representing odd-harmonics frequencies is constructed by using the information of the reference’s basis period and the preferred tracking bandwidth. Secondly, an optimization problem synthesized from the stability condition of the RC closed-loop system is solved to obtain the fractional phase lead compensator. Finally, the fractional term of the stabilizing controller is realized by using a causal and stable infinite impulse response (IIR) filter, where the filter coefficients are computed by applying the Thiran formula. Simulation and experimental validation on a servomotor system are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed design.

This article presents a systematic method for designing discrete-time low-order sliding mode repetitive controller for a class of uncertain linear systems. A linear system considered in this class is perturbed by band-limited periodic disturbances and parametric uncertainties. The digital controller design method we propose combines two control strategies, namely the repetitive control and the sliding mode control techniques. The proposed controller is required to be low order and is intended to reject the periodic disturbances with specific dominant frequencies and to establish robustness against plant parametric uncertainties. Moreover, the proposed method yields a repetitive controller with only a small number of delay terms and can perform fast transient responses. We show through mathematical analyses that the linear system applying the low-order sliding mode repetitive controller satisfies sliding mode stability and robustness criteria. In addition, we demonstrate via a numerical example that a servomotor controlled by the low-order sliding mode repetitive controller can track a frequency-shifted triangular signal with a short transient period and minor errors. Other examples are also presented and show that the low-order sliding mode repetitive controller exhibits better performance than other relevant control methods.

This paper presents a novel design of discrete-time dual internal model-based repetitive control systems. The design strategy is accomplished by combining general and high-order modified repetitive control schemes for simultaneous tracking repetitive tasks and rejection of uncertain periodic disturbances. The proposed controller is constructed from two different discrete-time internal models, rendering a dual internal model-based repetitive controller (DIMRC). The first internal model is intended to track repetitive commands with a fixed fundamental frequency. Meanwhile, the second internal model is coupled to compensate for an exogenous periodic disturbance with an uncertain frequency. The controller structure, stability conditions, and convergence analysis are discussed in this paper. The performance of the proposed controller is validated through simulation studies showing accurate tracking and excellent disturbance rejection simultaneously.