Combination of the Flow Disturbance Observer and Base Plate Jerk Feedback in a Pneumatic Positioning Stage

Pneumatic actuation systems are commonly used to drive the positioning stage due to several merits. However, one of the critical demerits of the pneumatic systems is the problem of the compressibility, which results in the flow disturbance. Another problem of the positioning stage can be addressed to the vibration which occurs due to the active condition of the base plate. This paper concerns the mentioned two issues in a pneumatic positioning stage. In order to suppress the flow disturbance and to reduce the horizontal vibration of the stage due to the reaction force, a combined control scheme is proposed. This scheme is composed of the fusion of flow disturbance observer (FDOB) and base plate jerk feedback (BPJFB) scheme. An enhanced experimental methodology is provided to successfully implement the fusion of the mentioned feedback controllers. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.