Position control of pneumatic actuator using sliding mode control in conjunction with Robust Exact Differentiator

In this paper a sliding mode control law is developed based on reduced order mathematical model of the pneumatic actuator for fast, accurate and inexpensive system with excellent tracking performance. Only one sensor, potentiometer is used thereby making the system very inexpensive. Application of Robust Exact Differentiator (Levant differentiator) is utilized for deriving the information of two states very accurately without any noise, velocity and acceleration respectively, which resulted in accurate control action. The advantages of sliding mode control, in tackling with uncertainties are exhibited by different weights as pay load to the system. The experimental results obtained are of superior quality compared to the previous works.