Modeling, design, and control integration: a necessary step in mechatronics

Future products require more sophistication and flexibility from both the hardware and software points of view. In particular, these products involve several energy domains, which is one reason for the new requirements for system design and the integration of design and control. These are important aspects not only for industrial research and development personnel but also for academicians. In this paper, a modeling and control system perspective relevant to the systems approach and fast adaptive control systems is first presented. Specifically, some of the important aspects are properties from graphical system representation, achievable performance, and fast control algorithms. A few applications are then presented to illustrate some system design requirements and control system characteristics. These applications emphasize the demand for high performance systems which has introduced an increasingly challenging system design problem. The applications discussed include high-speed robot manipulators, high-speed and high-precision magnetic bearing systems, atomic resolution systems, and their control using digital signal processing boards. Experimental results pertaining to the control of a five-axis magnetically levitated turbopump are presented.