Advanced motion control for precision mechatronics: Control, identification, and learning of complex systems

Abstract

Manufacturing equipment and scientific instruments, including wafer scanners, printers, microscopes, and medical imaging scanners, require accurate and fast motions. An increase in such requirements necessitates enhanced control performance. The aim of this paper is to identify several challenges for advanced motion control originating from these increasing accuracy, speed, and cost requirements. For instance, flexible mechanics must be explicitly addressed through overactuation, oversensing, inferential control, and position-dependent control. This in turn requires suitable models of appropriate complexity. One of the main advantages of such motion systems is the fact that experimenting and collecting large amounts of accurate data is inexpensive, paving the way for identifying and learning of models and controllers from experimental data. Several ongoing developments are outlined that constitute part of an overall framework for control, identification, and learning of complex motion systems. In turn, this may pave the way for new mechatronic design principles, leading to fast lightweight machines where spatio-temporal flexible mechanics are explicitly compensated through advanced motion control.