Adaptive backstepping control of pneumatic servo system

Because of its high power-to-weight ratio, safe, clean and other advantages, pneumatic servo systems are widely applied in the factory automation and the other applications. However, due to the compressibility of gas and friction, the high precision control is a challenge and key problem of pneumatic servo system. In this paper, an adaptive backstepping controller is designed to control rodless cylinder using the proportional valve. The method has no requirement of the pressure sensors and the derivative calculation of the reference signal. The controller can be designed without the prior knowledge about the system model and the boundary of the model uncertainty. The controlled experiments are performed, the results show that the proposed method achieves better precision compared to some slide mode controllers.