Theory and applications of the robust cross-coupled control design

Cross-coupled control (CCC) has been recognized as an efficient motion controller that reduces contouring errors, but theoretical analysis of it is lacking, and there is no systematic design approach for obtaining a CCC system with guaranteed control performance. Consequently, the compensators C in CCC are commonly implemented in a PID structure and their contouring accuracy is usually degraded in real applications under different operating conditions. In an attempt to overcome the CCC design limitations described above, this paper introduces a robust CCC design based on a novel formulation: the contouring error transfer function (CETF), leading to an equivalent formulation as in the feedback control design problem. Then, methods in robust control design can be readily employed to achieve robust CCC with specified stability margins and guaranteed contouring performance. Furthermore, the proposed design has been verified as being internally stable. All provided experimental results indicate that the proposed robust CCC design consistently renders satisfactory contouring accuracy under different operating conditions