Combining the positive stage and base plate jerk feedback schemes to speedup a pneumatic stage

In this paper, the stage jerk feedback (SJFB) with positive polarity is proposed to reduce the stage mass in a pneumatically actuated positioning system. Reduction of stage mass, from one side, results in the high speed positioning which is the main objective of this study. However, on the other hand, it results in an overshoot in the positioning response, which can be compensated through the stiffness gain of the outer loop controller. Moreover, the system becomes easily unstable by further increasing the SJFB gain due to the positive polarity of this controller. This issue is solved by coupling the conventional controller, namely, the base plate jerk feedback (BPJFB) scheme with positive polarity. The experimental results show the effectiveness of both schemes. In addition, based on the experimental estimation, the SJFB has a significant role on the stage mass reduction.