Internal model control for a hydraulically driven robotic arm

The robotic arm presented in this paper is part of an unloading machine used in the process of hot rolling to extract the heated billets from inside the rotary hearth furnace. The robotic arm positioning is hydraulically driven due to higher speed response. For the horizontal positioning of the arm a control structure is needed since the displacement of a billet is constantly changing. It is intended by means of this paper to obtain a control structure using the internal model control method that improves the performances of the current control systems that are mostly tuned based on rich experience. The results assessment is done by means of simulation and the obtained controllers are compared on the basis of overall performances.