A nonlinear feedback tracking control for pneumatic cylinders and experiment study

The paper describes a nonlinear robust tracking control strategy and its on-line implementation for servo-controlled pneumatic systems. The pneumatic actuator system is initially transformed into a linear system description and then a robust servo/tracking controller is developed. Since there exists an inverse transformation for the new co-ordinate system, the designed servo control is transformed back to the original state co-ordinates. This control strategy is implemented onto a PC based controller platform and the system tracking performance is compared with the system using a traditional enhanced PID controller. The test results have demonstrated the merits of this control strategy.