Gain tuned internal model control for handling saturation in actuators

Many compensation techniques for handling saturation non-linearity have been devised, ranging from anti-windup, polynomial-based conditioning techniques, to nonlinear design techniques using state-space models. A new approach to handling actuator saturation based on internal model control (IMC) is proposed. Within the proposed framework, a gain term and first-order exponential filter are tuned to ´desaturate´ the actuator. A stability analysis shows the resulting system is always stable. Examples show the simplicity of design and the validity of proposed framework.