Predictive Position Control of Long-Stroke Planar Motors for High-Precision Positioning Applications

This article proposes a predictive position control of long-stroke planar motors to achieve micrometer-scale positioning under long-stroke time-varying trajectory tracking for use in high-precision positioning applications. The motivation consists in the potential application of model predictive control in long-stroke planar motors for high-precision positioning systems. This control is the first of its kind for planar motors. A dynamic model of a long-stroke planar motor developed in the laboratory is built, and then a predictive model is established to predict future positions of the motor. An additional term is introduced to a cost function to improve the positioning accuracy, which provides an output feedback control action to the motor for reducing the model error of the predictive model. By minimizing the cost function, an analytically explicit solution of the optimal control sequence is obtained, which makes the computational burden of the controller low. The stability of the control system is discussed based on the closed-loop state-space model. Moreover, the selection of stable control parameters is theoretically given. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control method of long-stroke planar motors for use in high-precision positioning applications.