Contouring performance improvement of biaxial motion control systems using friction and disturbance compensation

One of the key issues regarding multi-axis contour following tasks in modern high-precision machining applications is how to effectively reduce contour error. Generally, among existing approaches, the Cross-Coupled Control (CCC) structure is widely used in multi-axis contour following tasks to improve contouring accuracy. However, when a servomechanism is operated in reverse or low-speed motions, the inherent friction force and external disturbance effects will degrade the CCC performance. Therefore, to cope with the aforementioned problems, this paper exploits the Karnopp friction model-based compensator and the Virtual Plant Disturbance Compensator (VPDC) to improve tracking performance as well as contouring accuracy. Moreover, an integrated motion control scheme is also developed to further improve contouring performance. The proposed scheme consists of two position loop controllers with velocity command feed forward, a modified CCC, two friction force compensators, and two disturbance compensators. To evaluate the performance of the proposed approach, several free-form contour following experiments have been conducted on an X-Y table driven by two linear motors. Experimental results verify that the proposed approach can significantly enhance contouring performance for free-form contour following tasks.