Optimal seek-trajectory design for dual-stage systems

The minimum-energy, output-transition problem for dual-stage systems is solved in this article. The objective is to find optimal inputs that change the system output from an initial value to a final value during a specified output-transition time-interval. The main contribution of this article is accounting for the actuator redundancy when optimizing the output-transition problem for dual-stage systems. Additionally, it is shown that inputs applied outside the output-transition time-interval (i.e., pre- and post-actuation) can substantially reduce the required input energy. This advantage of using pre- and post-actuation is evaluated with an example dual-stage system. In particular, the experimental results show that the input-energy can be reduced by 69% with the use of pre-and post-actuation inputs when compared to standard methods that do not use such pre- and post-actuation