Motion synchronization of dual-cylinder pneumatic servo systems with integration of adaptive robust control and cross-coupling approach

We investigate motion synchronization of dual-cylinder pneumatic servo systems and develop an adaptive robust synchronization controller. The proposed controller incorporates the cross-coupling technology into the integrated direct/indirect adaptive robust control (DIARC) architecture by feeding back the coupled position errors, which are formed by the trajectory tracking errors of two cylinders and the synchronization error between them. The controller employs an online recursive least squares estimation algorithm to obtain accurate estimates of model parameters for reducing the extent of parametric uncertainties, and uses a robust control law to attenuate the effects of parameter estimation errors, unmodeled dynamics, and disturbances. Therefore, asymptotic convergence to zero of both trajectory tracking and synchronization errors can be guaranteed. Experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed controller.