Active disturbance rejection position control for a magnetic rodless pneumatic cylinder

This paper presents an active disturbance rejection position control scheme for a magnetic rodless cylinder in servo systems without pressure states. It is very hard to achieve precise position control of magnetic rodless cylinders due to nonlinearity from large friction force and hysteresis. In this paper, the overshoot, which has a negative influence on position control, is effectively reduced by using a tracking differentiator. Furthermore, the nonlinearity is estimated by a designed extended-state observer. In addition, the self-stable region theory is used to prove the convergence of the extended-state observer. Finally, both control precision and response speed are guaranteed via a nonlinear error feedback controller in the pneumatic system. Experimental results show that the steady-state error within 0.05 mm is achieved for a step signal.