Sub-micrometer control of a traction drive using state feedback and estimation

There is a need to improve the tracking performance of traction drives while overcoming their inherent sensitivity to disturbances. To better understand their behavior, their operating characteristics are investigated and a system model is developed. Using this model, a state feedback regulator is designed. In order to eliminate steady state errors to step commands and improve tracking performance, an outer PID loop is added. The performance of this controller is then compared with that of a PID controller. It is shown that the state feedback/PID scheme reduces the tracking errors and the effects of disturbances better than the PID controller.