Tracking and Shape Control of a Micro-cantilever using Electrostatic Actuation

In this paper, the problems of state estimation, tracking control and shape control in a micro-cantilever beam with nonlinear electrostatic actuation are investigated. The system’s partial differential equation of motion is converted into a set of ordinary differential equations by projection method. Observabillity of the system is proven and a state estimation system is designed using extended Kalman filter (EKF) algorithm. A tracking control system is designed to make a specific point of the beam follow a reference signal. The effect of mode selection to include in model on controller performance is also investigated. Based on the tracking controller a shape control algorithm is designed to form the shape of beam into a desired shape. The proposed algorithms are validated by numerical simulation and resulted in a promising performance.