High performance control method of electro-mechanical actuator based on active disturbance rejection control

Abstract

Integrated electro-mechanical actuators (EMAs) are widely used in cooperative robots. Their control system has to be carefully designed to achieve a desirable performance. The proportional-integral (PI) control and the active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) are the two commonly used controllers. Compared with the PI, the ADRC shows better performance in terms of disturbance rejection, response speed and overshooting suppression. However, the ADRC utilises numerous parameters and the optimisation of these parameters is a challenge. In this study, the influence of the parameters of β01, β02, β03, β1, β2 on the ADRC performance is deeply analysed. Considering the two non-linear factors of permanent magnet synchronous motor and harmonic transmission in the EMA, a simulation model of the EMA was established. An improved swarm optimisation algorithm was employed to optimise the parameters of the ADRC. A second-order ADRC in speed and position modes was designed. The parameters of the ADRC in these modes were adjusted using improved particle swarm optimisation. ADRC was applied to the EMA field-oriented control system instead of cascade PI, and the simulation and experimental results were compared using the cascade PI control method. When the target speed is to 15 rpm, the speed fluctuation range of the ADRC is about ±0.3 rpm, which is smaller than that of the PI controller’s ±0.5 rpm. Compared with the cascade PI control, ADRC affords a faster response speed, greater robustness and stronger disturbance resistance in the steady-state operation process.