On the design of position control systems

Using as an example a simple position control with narrow accuracy requirements, the paper makes a comparison of a number of design methods. It demonstrates that, by considering the phase-plane, simple piecewise-linear controllers can be designed to achieve excellent performance in competition with more sophisticated methods. Nonlinear suboptimal controllers are considered; it is shown that `pessimistic´ design can give substantial immunity to deflecting forces. The assertions are supported by simulations, and the performance is compared with that of time-optimal control