A neural net-based time-delay compensation scheme and disturbance rejection for pneumatic systems

In practical electro-pneumatic or hydraulic servo mechanism, there is usually an unavoidable operating delay time in the solenoid valves. This may sometimes cause closed-loop instability if the time delay is not treated carefully in the control system designs. Furthermore, pneumatic actuators can offer high performance at low cost, but are often suffered from external disturbances depending on the operating conditions. This paper proposes a non-model-based design approach for pneumatic actuating systems. In the proposed control system, a gain scheduled fuzzy-PID controller ensures tracking performance, an adaptable wavelet neuro compensator compensates for time-delay of the control valve, and a disturbance rejecter diminishes influence from load changes. A condition ensuring the closed-loop stability is derived. The proposed design is experimentally verified to show its effectiveness.