Feedforward controller design for a spatially distributed transport system considering input constraints

The article deals with the design of a feedforward controller for a transport system with spatially distributed control input considering input constraints. The feedforward controller is used to compensate transport delays in the input-/output (I/O) behavior of the transport system by realizing exact trajectory tracking of the nominal output along desired trajectories. The proposed method is based on the inversion of the linear I/O-model of the considered transport system. The input constraints are considered by optimizing parameters of the planned output trajectories. The presented method is compared to an early lumping approach discretizing the model equations and solving an optimization problem of the discretized system. Finally simulation results are presented and discussed.