Arab J Sci Eng (2014) 39:4131–4140

DOI 10.1007/s13369-014-1008-8

RESEARCH ARTICLE - MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

A Neural-Repetitive Control Approach for High-Performance

Motion Control of Piezo-Actuated Systems
Chi-Ying Lin · Chien-Yao Li

Received: 24 July 2012 / Accepted: 15 March 2013 / Published online: 11 March 2014
© King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals 2014

Abstract This paper presents a neural-repetitive approach

to the precision control of piezo-actuated systems. Two neural
controllers are used in the proposed control scheme. The first
controller is a standard neural adaptive controller using a
radial basis function network as a baseline for motion control.
To eliminate non-zero periodic errors originating in the deter-
ministic reference signals, an additional neural controller
containing a discrete-time repetitive controller was added
by introducing solutions of a transformed feedforward con-
trol problem constrained by a deterministic internal model.
The proposed neural-repetitive controllers were applied to a
piezo-actuated system to track periodic and complex motion
profiles. The experimental results demonstrate that the pro-
posed neural-repetitive controller improves control perfor-
mance, showing good robustness pertaining to variations in 1 Introduction
plant parameters.
Over the last two decades there has been a significant increase
Keywords Neural network · Repetitive control · in the demand for precision piezo-actuated systems due to
Piezo-actuated systems · Motion control their effectiveness in precision engineering, in fields such as
manufacturing, measurement, biomedical instrumentation,
optics and magnetic drives, to name a few. Increasing the
positioning accuracy of applied piezo-actuated systems is an
effective approach to improving the performance of these
devices to enhance the potential benefits of mass production.
In addition, this approach avoids the need to replace exist-
ing systems with higher resolution but far costlier precision
hardware.
The dominant hysteresis effect limiting the precision with
which piezoelectric devices can be controlled has drawn a
great deal of attention from researchers. Two strategies are
commonly employed for the precise positioning of piezo-
C.-Y. Lin (B) · C.-Y. Li actuated systems. The first one applies various mathemati-
Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Taiwan
cal models for hysteresis modeling and compensation. The
University of Science and Technology, 43 Keelung Road,
Section 4, Taipei 10672, Taiwan Preisach model and its variations [1–4] are very popular
e-mail: chiying@mail.ntust.edu.tw examples of this approach, applying a linear combination

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4132
of backlash operators for modeling to determine the inverse
model for feedforward compensation. However, the com-
plexity of modeling burden and sensitivity to modeling errors
diminish the feasibility of employing this method when the
system is subject to changes in parameters or reference inputs.
The second approach, referred to as feedback control [2],
is an excellent choice for robustness and control performance.
Applying intelligent control algorithms such as neural net-
work adaptive controls [5,6] is an attractive approach to
dealing with plant nonlinearities in dynamic systems. For
example, Ku et al. [5] applied a cerebellar model articula-
tion controller neural network control algorithm to a three-
degrees-of-freedom nanopositioner providing better perfor-
mance than standard proportional-integral-derivative (PID)
control algorithms. More recently, Lin et al. [6] proposed
an adaptive wavelet neural network control with hystere-
sis model parameter estimation and applied it to a piezo-
positioning mechanism for tracking control.
Although neural controllers have proven effective in
motion control of piezo-actuated systems, a number of issues
remain unresolved. From the perspective of performance,
one obvious observation is the existence of persistent steady-
state periodic errors, when tracking dynamic profiles contain-
ing high-frequency deterministic components [6,7]. As the
demand for increased performance continues to rise, non-
convergent error is becoming a critical issue in repetitive
tasks and an impediment to the performance of piezo-
actuated motion control systems.
To compensate for this error, researchers have been apply-
ing repetitive control, an internal model-based feedback con-
trol approach, to track or reject periodic inputs in piezo-
actuated systems [4,8]. The idea behind this controller is
to include a known model of the deterministic input sig-
nal as part of the stabilizing controller, thereby obtaining
asymptotic error followed by the internal model principle
[9]. Unfortunately, in piezo-actuated systems, this approach
causes significant transient error due to the applied internal
model, which requires nonlinear feedforward compensators
[4,10] to overcome the performance limitations caused by the
hysteresis effect. The necessity of adding these model-based
hysteresis compensators to achieve satisfactory performance,
however, still results in similar robustness issues mentioned
above.
In light of this, we developed a hybrid control approach
[11] combining a neural controller and repetitive controller
for highly precise motion control of piezo-actuated systems.
We first applied neural network adaptive controllers based on
standard radial basis function (RBF) as the primary neural
controller for baseline performance. Motivated by the con-
cept of “add-ons”, a second neural-repetitive controller was
added to address the constrained feedforward control prob-
lem through the use of deterministic constraints. By provid-
ing a solution to the problem of Bezout identity, we produced
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Arab J Sci Eng (2014) 39:4131–4140
a repetitive controller with a performance index minimized
by the RBF neural networks. Instead of using the common
technique that requires complex and accurate hysteresis mod-
eling, we utilized the proposed neural-repetitive controllers
to integrate the advantages of each method to enhance the
performance and robustness of piezo-actuated systems.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Sec-
tion 2 presents the neural network adaptive control algorithms
applied in this study. Section 3 illustrates the main idea of the
proposed control block diagram with performance analysis.
Section 4 demonstrates the experimental results and offers a
discussion based on a piezoelectric actuator system. Finally,
several concluding remarks are given.
2 Motion Control Using Neural Networks
This study applied neural network adaptive controllers based
on RBF for precision motion control of piezo-actuated sys-
tems. Before addressing the core idea behind the design of
the proposed neural-repetitive controller, we will look at the
design of a simple neural controller for review purposes.
Figure 1 is a diagram of the neural network control block
for tracking control, where G is the system plant, r is the
tracking input, y is the system output, u is the applied con-
trol input, and e is the tracking error. As non-model-based
controllers, neural network controllers have the advantage of
autonomous internal adjustment of the parameters within the
controller when applied to nonlinear and time varying sys-
tems. Because the control system (piezo-actuated system) in
this study exhibits a significant degree of hysteresis, applying
the neural adaptive controller is a straightforward approach
to enhancing control performance in motion control applica-
tions.
In fact, the above diagram of the control block is a sim-
plified version of a neural network direct model reference
self-adaptive control with reference model equal to identity
[12]. Because the model reference output ym is same as the
plant output, we selected this control structure for the sake
of simplicity and generality with regard to standard feedback
controllers.
Various neural network structures are available for the
design of motion controllers. Due to its fast convergence and
fitness to real-time implementation, this study applied a RBF
r u y
+ e
NN G
-
Fig. 1 Neural network control block diagram
Arab J Sci Eng (2014) 39:4131–4140 4133

w j (k)e(k)
1 σ j (k + 1) = σ j (k) + η2 ϕ j ||x(k) − c j (k)||2
1 σ j3 (k)
j = 1...m (3)
1 z1 where η0 , η1 , η2 , η3 represent the corresponding learning
gain, c and σ represent the center position and the standard
w0 deviation of the Gaussian function in the neurons, respec-
z2
2 w1 tively. The Gaussian or radial function ϕ is defined as:
 
w2 Σ x − c2
z3 yNN ϕ = exp − (4)
x 3
w3 2σ 2
wj
. The above neural control algorithm is suited to many motion
. control applications, including piezo tracking control. We
.
zj
applied the neural controller shown in Fig. 1 as the first
feedback controller to provide a performance baseline. In
j the next section, we will illustrate how to further improve
the control performance through the addition of a second
Input Hidden Layer Output
repetitive-neural controller.
Fig. 2 Schematic diagram of the neural network using radial basis
function
3 Performance Improvement by Adding Repetitive
neural network to update the parameters of the neural con- Control
troller [13]. Neural networks employing RBF are standard
feedforward neural networks using functional approximation 3.1 Overall Structure
to determine the mapping between interested input and out-
put. The network structure includes an input layer, a single The main idea behind this paper can be illustrated using the
hidden layer, and an output layer as shown in Fig. 2, where control block diagram shown in Fig. 3.
x is the trained sample derived from the tracking error signal Where C1 and C2 represent two neural controllers with
e, ϕ are the neurons in the hidden layer, z represents the cor- control inputs u 1 and u 2 , respectively. G is the plant model
responding neuron output, w represents the weightings to be of G obtained by standard system identification techniques.
updated and yNN is the network output or equally the neural Assume C1 and C2 are linear time invariant; a simple perfor-
controller input. Note that m is the number of neurons in the mance analysis is performed by checking the transfer func-
applied network. tion from reference r and disturbance d to the tracking error
Let the control cost function be: e as follows:

1 1 − ĜC2 1 − ĜC2
E(k) = e(k)2 (1) e= r− d (5)
2 1 + GC1 1 + GC1

where e(k) = r (k) – y(k) and k is the discrete time step. The where Ĝ ≈ G is the assumption required for the above result.
controller output of the RBF neural network is It is clear that the magnitude of the sensitivity function for
reference tracking and disturbance rejection is reduced by

m
introducing this control architecture. As a result, an improve-
yNN (k) = w j z j + w0 (2)
j=1

Following the steepest gradient descent algorithm, one can

C1
derive the weight parameters’ update formula for the RBF u1
d
neural network as: + +
r + + u′ + u y
e C2 G
w0 (k + 1) = w0 (k) + η0 e(k) - + u2 +

w j (k + 1) = w j (k) + η3 e(k)ϕ j
w j (k)e(k)
c j (k + 1) = c j (k) + η1 ϕ j (x(k) − c j (k))
σ j2 (k)
Fig. 3 Proposed control block diagram

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4134 Arab J Sci Eng (2014) 39:4131–4140

ment control performance is guaranteed as long as C1 and

C2 are properly designed. u u2, RC
In this paper, C1 was selected as a RBF mentioned in the C'2
previous section. The objective of this controller is to mini-
mize tracking error e = (r −y) in the presence of external dis- + u2
turbance input d. To enhance control performance, we intro-
duced another neural controller C2 containing a repetitive D
controller for the cancelation of periodic error. The design of +
C2 was not trivial, and required further manipulation based Q
on the technique mentioned in [14]. u2, NN
Copy of Q C2
3.2 Neural-Repetitive Controller Design

In this section, we illustrate how we built our neural-repetitive R'

controller based on the idea of feedforward control with inter-
nal model constraints. To begin with, let us consider the case
of using only controller C2 . Then (5) becomes
e = (1 − ĜC2 )r − (1 − ĜC2 )d (6)
Obviously, the original feedback control problem has been
transformed to a feedforward control problem, and the objec-
tive here is to minimize tracking error with cost function
J = (1 − ĜC2 ). The simplest solution to this control prob-
lem was to identify the stable plant inverse of Ĝ [15]. Several
performance indices such as 2-norm or infinity-norm could
be applied to various control optimization problems [16]. In
practical applications, we are interested in the case where the
system input contains a specific internal model D, known as
a priori. For example, we may know the periodic components
in the applied tracking profile or the degree of disturbance to
be rejected. Now let
1 − ĜC2 = R D or ĜC2 + R D = 1 (7)
where R is a part of the controller, C2 , which needs to be
designed. The above equation may be recognized as the
famous “Bezout identity” [17] with the assumption that G
and D are coprime. This equation has an infinite number of
solutions, and one way to represent these multiple solutions
is using the Youla parameterization technique [17]. Given a
pair of nominal solutions (R  ,C2 ), we can express the solu-
tions of (7) as R = R  – ĜQ and C2 = C2 + DQ, where Q
is a free design parameter. Consider the performance index
with 2-norm measures.
 
 
J = (R  − Ĝ Q)D  (8)
2 controller Q. Several options are available to solve (7). This
The objective of employing the neural controller C2 was
to minimize J using optimization algorithms and simulta-
neously satisfy the deterministic constraints described by
the internal model D. The selection of the internal model
depends on the input signals we are dealing with. In this
study, the input is a periodic signal used for tracking con-
trol, therefore D was selected as D = 1 − z −N , where N
+
-
Q
NN adaption
Fig. 4 Block diagram of the neural-repetitive controller C2
is the period of the deterministic periodic signal. Under the
above assumptions, we represent this constrained optimiza-
tion problem as:
 
 
min J = (R  − Ĝ Q)D  (9)
Q ∈ RH∞ 2
D = 1 − z −N
where R H ∞ is a set of stable rational transfer functions. To
minimize J and update Q adaptively, we applied an RBF
neural network algorithm. Figure 4 shows the control block
diagram of the neural-repetitive controller C2 . Clearly, u 2
comprises two control inputs. One is u 2,RC coming from
C2 , the internal model controller or repetitive controller. The
other input is u 2,NN , derived from the minimization of the
tracking error e or disturbance d using an RBF neural net-
work.
We have now established the neural-repetitive control
problem, and the next step is to determine a nominal solution
to solve the Bezout identity (7) and update the neural adaptive
paper adopted the method using a zero-phase-error-tracking
type feedforward formula [15]. The procedure for obtaining
this particular solution is briefly presented as follows.
First, let us consider a single-input, single-output plant
model Ĝ and factorize Ĝ into two parts Ĝ = G o G i , in which
G o is minimum phase and G i is non-minimum phase, respec-
tively. Suppose

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Arab J Sci Eng (2014) 39:4131–4140 4135

Fig. 5 Schematic diagram of

used instruments

AO PZT
OX Amplifier
D AQ B
AI

PC
PZT
Sensor
Amplifier

B B+ B− 4 Application in a Piezo-Actuated System

Ĝ = = = GoGi
A A
B+ To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control
Go = , Gi = B− (10)
A architecture, a piezo-actuated system was selected as the
experimental platform. It has been widely recognized that,
where A and B represent the denominator and numerator of
nonlinear behaviors such as hysteresis and creep commonly
Ĝ, B + and B − indicate the stable and unstable parts of B,
exist in piezo translators, impeding control performance. As a
respectively. By substituting (10) with (7), we obtain:
result, the neural controllers presented were intended to com-
pensate for these nonlinearities and maintain a high degree of
R D + C̃2 G i = 1
precision in the motion control system with the aid of added
C̃2 = C2 G o (11) repetitive control.
From the plant inversion idea presented in [15], one solu-
tion pair (R  , C2 ) to solve (11) is given as follows: 4.1 Hardware Description and System Identification

1
R = Figure 5 is a schematic diagram of the experimental appa-
1 − (1 − γ G i∗ G i )qz −N ratus. The apparatus consists of a piezoelectric actuator
γ G i∗ qz −N (Piezomechanik Pst 150/5/20 VS10) and a strain gauge driven
C̃2 = by power amplifiers. The max stroke of the piezoelectric
1 − (1 − γ G i∗ G i )qz −N
actuator was 20 µm. The control scheme was implemented
C2 = C̃2 G −1
o (12) using MATLAB® , and the data were acquired from a 16-bit
data acquisition card (NI PCI-6052E) at a 10 kHz sampling
where γ is a learning gain for performance tuning, G i∗ (z −1 )
rate. The measured output datum under regulation (with no
= G i (z), and q is a zero-phase low-pass filter to suppress
reference commands) had a sensor noise level of 7.9 nm.
the instability caused by high-gain feedback in undesired
We applied this apparatus to neural-repetitive controllers for
frequency ranges. Note that this q filter is embedded within
tracking experiments.
the internal model D = 1 − q(z, z −1 )z −N . For a detailed
Although the two main controllers used in this study were
description how to select design parameters γ and q for better
neural controllers, we still required an accurate plant model
performance, refer to [14]. Using the small-gain theorem for
for the design of the repetitive controller. We applied a fre-
this controller, one can derive a sufficient nominal stability
quency domain approach [18] to perform curve fitting and
criterion as:
identify parameters. The frequency responses of the plant in
  the system and identified model are shown in Fig. 6. The
1 − γ G∗ Gi  < 1 ∀ ωT ∈ [0, π ] (13)
i
|q| continuous-time transfer function of the plant model G(s)
was a second-order system represented as:
where ω T is the discrete frequency with a unit (rad/sample).
The bold face letters in (13) indicate the transfer function in −1.19e14 s + 1.417e19
G(s) = (14)
the discrete time z-domain. s 2 + 6.96e15 s + 3.222e19

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4136 Arab J Sci Eng (2014) 39:4131–4140

DSA Frequency Responses

Magnitude (dB)
0 Although it converged rapidly, controller C1 , exhibited
-10
a non-zero steady-state periodic error in tracking determin-
istic reference signals. Unlike the above result, applying C2
-20
without activating C1 showed significant transient error, even
-30 when using both NN and RC. However, the steady-state error
-40 converged to nearly sensor noise level values in ∼0.6 s as C2
0 1 2 3 4
10 10 10 10 10 (RC) was applied. These interesting results motivated us to
Frequency (Hz) further study C1 and C2 in the pursuit of better control per-
formance.
0
After adding C2 with RC to C1 , the obvious transient
Phase (deg)

-50
errors were significantly reduced, as shown in Fig. 7e, f.
-100 However, adding C2 as a neural controller (Fig. 7d) did not
-150 Curve Fit improve the control performance sufficiently to exceed that of
Frequency Response
-200 applying C1 alone (Fig. 7c). Moreover, applying C2 with the
0 1 2 3 4
10 10 10 10 10 repetitive controller resulted in tracking error convergence in
Frequency (Hz) half the time (in <0.3 s) demonstrating a mild improvement
Fig. 6 Frequency response plots of the piezo-actuated system and its in transient performance when applying both NN and RC in
identified model C2 (Fig. 7f).
The precision constraints of motion control in
piezo-actuated systems are becoming increasingly stringent
4.2 Tracking Results
due to the urgent requirements of customers, the demand for
high precision, and the unyielding pressure from the profit
Figure 7 shows the experimental results of tracking a 4-µm,
motive. In addition to tracking a monotonic harmonic fre-
10-Hz sinusoidal input by applying various combinations of
quency reference input as a benchmark, this study investi-
controllers C1 and C2 , where RC and NN stand for repet-
gated the control performance of neural-repetitive controllers
itive controller and neural network controller, respectively.
for the high-speed tracking of complex motion profiles. Fig-
The structures of the neural network applied in C1 and C2
ure 8 illustrates the experimental results of tracking a 100-Hz
include an input layer, a hidden layer, and one output. The
profile with same magnitude as a 10-Hz case. Clearly, the
only difference was the number of neurons used (two in C1
convergent speed was ten times faster with an increase of
and four in C2 ). For simplicity sake, the values of c and σ of
nearly one order of magnitude in transient error. It is clear
the radial function ϕ were fixed.

Fig. 7 Experimental results of (a) (b)

tracking a 4-µm and 10-Hz 4 4
Error (μm)

Error (μm)

sinusoidal wave. a RC (C2 ). b 2 2

RC/NN (C2 ). c NN (C1 ). d NN 0 0
(C1 ) + NN (C2 ). e NN (C1 ) + -2 -2
-4 -4
RC (C2 ). f NN (C1 ) + RC/NN
0 0.5 1 0 0.5 1
(C2 )
Time (sec) Time (sec)

(c) (d)
Error (μm)
Error (μm)

0.2 0.2
0 0
-0.2 -0.2

0 0.5 1 0 0.5 1

Time (sec) Time (sec)

(e) (f)
Error (μm)

Error (μm)

0.2 0.2
0 0
-0.2 -0.2

0 0.5 1 0 0.5 1

Time (sec) Time (sec)

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Arab J Sci Eng (2014) 39:4131–4140 4137

Fig. 8 Experimental results of (a) (b)

tracking a 4-µm and 100-Hz 4 4

Error (μm)

Error (μm)
sinusoidal wave. a RC (C2 ). b 2 2
RC/NN (C2 ). c NN (C1 ). d NN 0 0
(C1 ) + NN (C2 ). e NN (C1 ) + -2 -2
RC (C2 ). f NN (C1 ) + RC/NN -4 -4
(C2 ) 0 0.05 0.1 0 0.05 0.1
Time (sec) Time (sec)
(c) (d)

Error (μm)
Error (μm)
1 1
0 0
-1 -1
0 0.05 0.1 0 0.05 0.1
Time (sec) Time (sec)
(e) (f)

Error (μm)

Error (μm)
1 1
0 0
-1 -1
0 0.05 0.1 0 0.05 0.1
Time (sec) Time (sec)

that, as long as the system bandwidth is high enough, high-
performance tracking of profiles with this system is possible.
To highlight the superior tracking performance of the
method, the above results were also compared to the ones
in a similar study [10] that focused on precise tracking con-
trol of piezoelectric actuators using repetitive control and an
inverse Prandtl–Ishlinskii hysteresis compensator. With the
same experimental setup and reference profiles, it is found
that using the proposed neural-repetitive controllers achieves
faster error convergent speed (from 6 to 4 cycles) and smaller
transient error magnitude (from ±1 to ±0.5 µm). Certainly,
this improved performance is due to the extensive use of
two adaptive controllers with additional cost of computation
time.
Another way to check the dynamic performance of the
controller is to track a profile consisting of several frequency
components. This kind of profile usually occurs in abrupt
movements such as step-and-scan motions involved in manu-
facturing semiconducting devices. Applying a Fourier trans-
form to the profile leads to an infinite number of frequency
components, although the dominant frequencies may be lim-
ited to just a few. To illustrate the effectiveness of the pro-
posed controllers in this case, a composite input for tracking
the experiment was selected as:
r (t) = 0.84∗ (sin(100π t) + sin(120π t) + sin(140π t)
+ sin(160π t) + sin(180π t))
Note that the unit is a micrometer. It is obvious from Fig.
9 that the neural-repetitive controller still showed superior
performance when using all of the control actions (Fig. 9f).
From the above results, we observed one interesting fact
regarding the limited improvement by applying NN in C2 .
It appears that in C2 , the neural network adaptive controller
acted very much like a bridge connecting the repetitive con-
troller and neural controller to improve the overall perfor-
mance of the control system. Using C2 , the designer of the
control system could turn off the NN action, and use only the
RC, if the transient performance was not a major concern.
For example, this would reduce the computation and pro-
gramming burden, and still deliver acceptable performance
when implemented on low-cost fixed-point microprocessors.
Although the cost of including the neural-repetitive con-
trollers might be computationally expensive due to the use
of adaptive control, the improvement in results remains a
very attractive alternative for engineering applications with
an extremely high precision threshold.
4.3 Comparison with PID Control
The results presented in the previous section demonstrate
the feasibility of the proposed neural-repetitive controllers.
To provide a fair evaluation demonstrating the effectiveness
of the applied approach, we implemented a comparison with
PID controllers, which are well established in the field.
Figure 10 shows the comparison results of tracking 10-
(15) and 100-Hz sinusoidal profiles, and a composite frequency
profile, respectively. In both cases, the PID controller exhib-
ited non-convergent steady-state error, whereas the neural-
repetitive controllers quickly converged to sensor noise levels
within five periodic cycles.

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Fig. 9 Experimental results of (a) (b)

tracking a complex multiple 4 4

Error (μm)

Error (μm)
frequency profile. a RC (C2 ). b 2 2
RC/NN (C2 ). c NN (C1 ). d NN 0 0
(C1 ) + NN (C2 ). e NN (C1 ) + -2 -2
-4 -4
RC (C2 ). f NN (C1 ) + RC/NN 0 0.5 1 0 0.5 1
(C2 )
Time (sec) Time (sec)
(c) (d)

Error (μm)
Error (μm)
1 1

0 0

-1 -1
0 0.5 1 0 0.5 1
Time (sec) Time (sec)
(e) (f)

Error (μm)

Error (μm)
1 1
0 0

-1 -1
0 0.5 1 0 0.5 1
Time (sec) Time (sec)

Fig. 10 Experimental results (a) (b)

comparing common PID 1 1
control. a Tracking error at 0.5 0.5
Error (μm)

Error (μm)
4 µm, 10 Hz, using PID. b
Tracking error at 4 µm, 10 Hz, 0 0
using NN (C1 ) + RC/NN (C2 ). c
Tracking error at 4 µm, 100 Hz, -0.5 -0.5
using PID. d Tracking error at
4 µm, 100 Hz, using NN (C1 ) + -1
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
-1
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
RC/NN (C2 ). e Tracking error at
Time (sec) Time (sec)
complex frequency, using PID. f
Tracking error at complex (c) 1 (d) 1
frequency, using NN (C1 ) +
RC/NN (C2 ) 0.5 0.5
Error (μm)
Error (μm)

0 0

-0.5 -0.5

-1 -1
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
Time (sec) Time (sec)
(e) 1
(f)
1

0.5 0.5
Error (μm)

Error (μm)

0 0

-0.5 -0.5

-1 -1
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
Time (sec) Time (sec)

4.4 Robustness Analysis
In piezo-actuated systems such as atomic force microscopy
and various micro/nano motion stages, the working environ-
ment causes the system parameters to continually change.
For example, changes in the mass of the examined samples
on the piezo-actuated stages or experimental re-setups are
just two common scenarios occurring in precision scanning
applications. In such cases the controller usually needs to be
redesigned, to avoid sacrificing control performance.

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DSA Frequency Responses

Magnitude (dB)
0 entire system dynamics changed with the addition of a flexure
mechanism. The frequency response plots obtained from a
-10
dynamic signal analyzer (Agilent 35670A) are shown in Fig.
-20
11, where G 1 and G 2 represent the original plant dynam-
-30 ics and perturbed model dynamics, respectively. It is clear
-40 that two obvious resonant modes occur at ∼950 and 2.8
0 1 2 3 4
10 10 10 10 10 kHz, respectively. This undesired resonance could reduce
Frequency (Hz) the stability margin in the feedback control system, making
0
the design of the controller much more difficult [4]. With-
out redesigning or retuning the previously designed neural-
Phase (deg)

-50 repetitive controllers, tracking experiments were performed

on this perturbed plant by providing an identical 10-Hz sinu-
-100 Original plant (G )
1
soidal reference input. The results are shown in Fig. 12,
Perturbed plant with loading (G )
2 accompanied with PID tracking control and unperturbed
-150
10
0
10
1 2
10
3
10 10
4
plant values.
Frequency (Hz) Clearly, applying the neural-repetitive controllers provides
superior control performance, even for the perturbed plant
Fig. 11 Frequency response plots of the original plant and perturbed
plant with loading G 2 . Applying the same PID controller showed a slow diver-
gent and larger error response, requiring retuning of the para-
meters to obtain acceptable performance, particularly with
regard to stabilization.
It is important to know whether the controllers are capa-
ble of preserving control performance, particularly when the
plant parameters have been dynamically changed.
To verify the robustness of the proposed neural-repetitive 5 Conclusion
control approach, we conducted the following experiment.
The piezoelectric actuator applied in the previous experi- This paper presents a neural-repetitive approach to the pre-
ments was installed at a self-designed piezo-stage [19] with cision control of piezo-actuated systems. The proposed con-
appropriate external pre-load adjustment. As expected, the troller comprises two RBF neural controllers, developed as

Fig. 12 Ten hertz profile (a) (b)

tracking results before/after the 0.2 0.2
system plant is changed. a PID
on G 1 . b PID on G 2 . c NN (C1 ) 0.1 0.1
+ RC/NN (C2 ) on G 1 . d NN
Error (μm)
Error (μm)

(C1 ) + RC/NN (C2 ) on G 2

0 0

-0.1 -0.1

-0.2 -0.2
0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3
Time (sec) Time (sec)
(c) 0.2
(d) 0.2

0.1 0.1
Error (μm)

Error (μm)

0 0

-0.1 -0.1

-0.2 -0.2
0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3
Time (sec) Time (sec)

123
4140
an “add-on” to transform a feedback control problem into a
feedforward problem using internal model constraints. Using
the first neural controller as a performance baseline, the sec-
ond controller was embedded with a repetitive controller and
updated by an adapted RBF neural network. Experiments
conducted on a piezoelectric actuator system tracking 10,
100 Hz with composite frequency motion profiles showed
high-speed transience in four repetitive cycles and asymp-
totic error magnitude within 20 % of the reference profiles.
In comparison with a PID controller on a perturbed dynamic
system, the proposed controller demonstrated good robust-
ness, even when plant parameters had changed.
Acknowledgments This paper was financially supported by the
National Science Council of Taiwan under Grant Number NSC 97-
2218-E-011-015.
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