This paper studies the position control of uncertain mechanical systems with measurement uncertainty. Firstly, an observer using measurement signals is designed to estimate the unknown disturbances under an improved assumption of the uncertainties. The improved assumption can give smaller error estimation with same observer gain compared with the conventional assumption. Next, the essence of the observer and the method for selecting the observer gain are introduced. For the case when measurement uncertainties are not considered, the observer is allowed to have a large gain. As for the current case, it is shown that the observer with a large gain will lead to a failure. Then, by using the observed values, two switching controllers using measurement signals are proposed to realize the position control. The proposed control is a generalization of the sliding mode control without measurement uncertainty to the case with measurement uncertainty. Meanwhile, the features of the velocity change of the controlled system are discussed. Finally, as an application of the control design, the position control of a dynamic positioning system is investigated in details.The motion of the controlled system exhibits obviously three phases with different velocity features during the system moves to the target position: approximate acceleration phase, approximate uniform velocity phase, and approximate deceleration phase, and the velocity of the approximate uniform velocity phase can be easily adjusted with the change of the control gains. KEYWORDS dynamic positioning system, measurement uncertainty, observer, switching controller, uncertain mechanical systems
INTRODUCTIONMechanical systems are described by second-order differential equations of the coordinates, reflecting the relations between position, velocity, and acceleration. Position control of a mechanical system aims at controlling the system to a specified position by using feedback controls with position signals, velocity signals, and acceleration signals, such as PID control, sliding mode control (SMC for short), and adaptive control. In control engineering, feedback control systems with mechanical position or velocity or acceleration as controlled variable are named servomechanism or servo, and they are widely used in various control applications, such as machine tool position control, radar tracking control, missile guidance control, rolling stabilization of ship, and control of robotic arm. It is referred to see the book of Nagrath and Gopal 1 for more details.
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