This paper deals with the problem of synthesizing feedforward control to aid the regulation of output of a nonlinear system in the presence of partially known exogenous inputs. The problem appears in many engineering applications including Rollto-Roll (R2R) manufacturing systems. Currently known methods for this problem either require the solution of a constrained partial differential equation or the preview information of the signal to be tracked. The novelty of this paper lies in synthesizing feedforward control as the solution of a system of differential-algebraic equations, which is considerably less complex and suitable for practical implementation. In this paper, we consider the problem of regulating the output while rejecting the disturbances and apply it to R2R manufacturing systems. The problem of tracking reference signals can also be handled with the suggested technique. We assume that the disturbance signal is the output of a known exogenous system with unknown initial conditions. A parameter identification scheme to estimate the unknown initial conditions is developed. The proposed technique is successfully applied to control of web tension in a large R2R machine which mimics most of the features of industrial R2R machines and contains real-time hardware and software that is used in industrial practice. Extensive experiments were conducted to evaluate the proposed scheme for web tension control under various experimental conditions, including different web speeds and materials. We will present and discuss the representative experimental results with the proposed technique and provide a comparison with an industrial PI control scheme to highlight the benefits of using the proposed scheme.

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