High-bandwidth nanopositioning via active control of system resonance

Abstract

Typically, the achievable positioning bandwidth for piezo-actuated nanopositioners is severely limited by the first, lightly-damped resonance. To overcome this issue, a variety of open- and closed-loop control techniques that commonly combine damping and tracking actions, have been reported in literature. However, in almost all these cases, the achievable closed-loop bandwidth is still limited by the original open-loop resonant frequency of the respective positioning axis. Shifting this resonance to a higher frequency would undoubtedly result in a wider bandwidth. However, such a shift typically entails a major mechanical redesign of the nanopositioner. The integral resonant control (IRC) has been reported earlier to demonstrate the significant performance enhancement, robustness to parameter uncertainty, gua-ranteed stability and design flexibility it affords. To further exploit the IRC scheme’s capabilities, this paper presents a method of actively shifting the resonant frequency of a nanopositioner’s axis, thereby delivering a wider closed-loop positioning bandwidth when controlled with the IRC scheme. The IRC damping control is augmented with a standard integral tracking controller to improve positioning accuracy. And both damping and tracking control parameters are analytically optimized to result in a Butterworth Filter mimicking pole-placement—maximally flat passband response. Experiments are conducted on a nanopositioner’s axis with an open-loop resonance at 508 Hz. It is shown that by employing the active resonance shifting, the closed-loop positioning bandwidth is increased from 73 to 576 Hz. Consequently, the root-mean-square tracking errors for a 100 Hz triangular trajectory are reduced by 93%.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

nanopositioning stage / high-bandwidth / resonant mode control / tracking control / integral resonant control

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. U2013211 and 51975375), the Open Foundation of the State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic Systems, China (Grant No. GZKF-202003), and the Binks Trust Visiting Research Fellowship (2018), University of Aberdeen, UK, awarded to Dr. Sumeet S. Aphale.

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