Experimental validation for the combination of funnel control with a feedforward control strategy

TL;DR

This paper experimentally validates a combined funnel and feedforward control strategy to improve output trajectory tracking in underactuated systems, demonstrating real-time implementation benefits.

Contribution

It introduces a novel combination of funnel feedback and feedforward control with experimental verification and real-time implementation on a minimum phase system.

Findings

Feedforward control mitigates funnel controller drawbacks.

Experimental results confirm improved trajectory tracking.

Real-time implementation on a minimum phase system is feasible.

Abstract

Current engineering design trends, such as light-weight machines and humanmachine-interaction, often lead to underactuated systems. Output trajectory tracking of such systems is a challenging control problem. Here, we use a twodesign-degree of freedom control approach by combining funnel feedback control with feedforward control based on servo-constraints. We present experimental results to verify the approach and demonstrate that the addition of a feedforward controller mitigates drawbacks of the funnel controller. We also present new experimental results for the real-time implementation of a feedforward controller based on servo-constraints on a minimum phase system.