Intuitive representation of gain schedulers to facilitate their design and tuning

A method of intuitive continuous gain scheduler design has been developed with a visual representation of the schedulers. Inspection of the unscheduled response allows for development of an initial gain scheduler. Comparison between the gain scheduler plot and the resulting system response enhances insight into the closed-loop system behavior, and one can adjust the gain scheduler to modify the system response. Several iterations of each gain scheduler design are given, along with the resulting system responses to a step command. Using this method, gain schedulers were developed for the precision control of a linear motor with distinct preexisting controllers in two dissimilar operational environments. In each operational environment, the addition of gain scheduling substantially improved the closed-loop transient response. In the first case, the dead-band region was reduced by 90%. In the second, the rise time of the system was reduced by a factor of 7/spl sim/14. The successful application of this design methodology to these distinct operational environments suggests that it would also be applicable to the development of gain schedulers for many other precision-motion-control applications where dead band is prevalent in the system response.