High Precision Adaptive Robust Neural Network Control of a Servo Pneumatic System

In this paper, an adaptive robust neural network controller (ARNNC) is synthesized for a single-rod pneumatic actuator to achieve high tracking accuracy without knowing the bounds of the parameters and disturbances. The ARNNC control framework integrates adaptive control, robust control, and neural network control intelligently. Adaptive control improves the precision of dynamic compensation with parametric estimation, and robust control attenuates the effect of unmodeled dynamics and unknown disturbances. In reality, the unmodeled dynamics of the complicated pneumatic systems and unpredictable disturbances in working conditions affect the tracking precision. However, these cannot be expressed as an exact formula. Therefore, the real-time learning radial basis function (RBF) neural network component is considered for better compensation of unmodeled dynamics, random disturbances, and estimation errors of the adaptive control. Although the bounds of the parameters and disturbances for the pneumatic systems are unknown, the prescribed transient performance and final tracking accuracy of the proposed method can be still achieved with fictitious bounds. Asymptotic tracking performance can be acquired under the provided circumstance. The comparative experiments with a pneumatic cylinder driven by proportional direction valve illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed ARNNC as shown by a high tracking accuracy is achieved.