A practical control method for precision motion—Improvement of NCTF control method for continuous motion control

The present paper describes a practical control method for a precision motion system and the performance thereof. For practical use, high motion control performance and ease of design and controller adjustment are desired. A nominal characteristic trajectory following control (NCTF control) has been investigated to realize high performance and ease of application of point-to-point (PTP) positioning. The controller comprising a nominal characteristic trajectory (NCT) and a PI compensator is free from exact modeling and parameter identification. In the present paper, the NCTF control is modified in order to improve the control performance of continuous motions such as tracking and contouring motions. The NCTF controller for continuous motion (referred to as Continuous Motion NCTF controller) has a structure that is almost identical to the conventional NCTF controller and is designed using the same design procedure. The Continuous Motion NCTF controller is applied to ball screw mechanisms, and its motion control performance is evaluated from the experimental tracking, contouring, and positioning control results. The experimental results prove that the Continuous Motion NCTF controller achieves the same positioning performance as the conventional NCTF controller, and generally achieves better continuous motion control performances than PI-D or conventional NCTF controllers. In 0.25 Hz and 100-nm radius circular motion, the experimental tracking errors for Continuous Motion NCTF were smaller than 10 nm.