Experimental evaluation of an ADRC law using a teaching platform

Abstract

This work presents the implementation of an Active Disturbance Rejection Control (ADRC) algorithm on an educational platform composed of a DC motor endowed with an optical encoder, and a power amplifier. The ADRC algorithm is composed of a Proportional Derivative controller, a Luenberger Observer (LO), and a Disturbance Observer (DOB). A salient feature of the ADRC algorithm is that the value of the DOB gain is limited by the first gain of the LO. This feature guarantees closed-loop stability and avoids using large gains in the DOB, thus attenuating the effect of measurement noise. On the other hand, the prior information of the parameters of the educational platform is reduced to the knowledge of the input gain. Real-time experiments on a prototype allows assessing the performance of the educational platform under the ADRC algorithm.