With the advantages of high resolution, structural simplicity, reliability, compact size, and high sensitivity, inductive sensors have been widely used in nanopositioning systems. However, the measuring range of traditional inductive sensors are usually limited to 0.2 mm. A novel analysis and design methodology of the miniaturized inductive sensor with large measuring range and nanoscale resolution is proposed. Firstly, an accurate leakage inductance model is established. Secondly, a design rule of armature size is proposed by considering the fringing effect. Then, the error terms introduced by the measurement circuit of differential inductive sensors are analyzed and the corresponding error suppression methods are illustrated. Moreover, A design rule of selecting the optimal excitation frequency is proposed to meet the requirements of high Q value and high bandwidth, and to minimize the impact of core loss resistance on the performance of the sensor. Validated by the experiments, the proposed analysis and design method can effectively guide the design of the miniaturized inductive sensor with nanoscale resolution in the measuring range of ±0.5 mm. The overall size of the fabricated sensor prototypes is less than 6 mm × 6 mm × 3 mm. Combined with large range, high resolution and ideal miniaturization, this inductive sensor can be well suitable for compact and large stroke nanopositioning systems.

Since most of XY positioning stages with large travel range proposed by former researchers suffer from loose structure and low out-of-plane payload, this article presents a novel monolithic parallel XY stage based on spatial prismatic–prismatic joints with centimeters travel range, compact size, and high out-of-plane payload capacity. The novel parallel linear compliant mechanism of the stage is composed of four spatial prismatic–prismatic joints, which is two compound leaf spring parallelograms serially connected in cubical space to obtain large travel, compact size, and high out-of-plane payload capacity simultaneously. The theoretical static stiffness and resonant frequencies are obtained by matrix structural analysis. As a case study, a reified stage is presented and discussed in detail. Finally, theoretical models are comprehensively compared with finite element analysis models. It is shown that the stage in the case study has the following merits: large travel range up to 20 × 20 mm², high-area ratio of workspace to the outer dimension of the stage about 2.26%, well-constrained cross-axis coupling motion less than 1.5 μm at the full primary motion, acceptable resonant frequencies of the two translational axes about 34 Hz, and large out-of-plane payload capacity more than 24 kg.

In the UAV electro-optical pod of the two-axis four-gimbal, the characteristics of a coarse–fine composite structure and the complexity of dynamics modeling affect the entire system’s high precision control performance. The core goal of this paper is to solve the high precision control of a two-axis four-gimbal electro-optical pod through dynamic modeling and theoretical study. In response to this problem, we used finite element analysis (FEA) and stress study of the key component to design the structure. The gimbals adopt the aerospace material 7075-t3510 aluminum alloy in order to meet the requirements of an ultralight weight of less than 1 kg. According to the Euler rigid body dynamics model, the transmission path and kinematics coupling compensation matrix between the two-axis four-gimbal structures are obtained. The coarse–fine composite self-correction drive equation in the Cartesian system is derived to solve the pre-selection and check problem of the mechatronic under high-precision control. Finally, the modeling method is substituted into the disturbance observer (DOB) disturbance suppression experiment, which can monitor and compensate for the motion coupling between gimbal structures in real time. Results show that the disturbance suppression impact of the DOB method with dynamics model is increased by up to 90% compared to PID (Proportion Integration Differentiation method) and is 25% better than the traditional DOB method.

In this paper, an integrated multi-parameter circuit is designed to meet the requirements of the ultrasonic motor for driving and measurement. The original signals are generated by the DDS method in FPGA. Then, to assure the purity of actuating signals, the linear amplifiers which operate with the transformers are chosen. Moreover, currents and voltages are obtained by their respective transformer modules, which are verified by the experiment results that the voltage measurement error can reach 1.3V, the current measurement error is 3mA, and the bandwidth can reach 60 kHz. Finally, the better actuating signals are obtained comparing with the traditional commercial driver and the repeatability of the parameter adjustments are achieved.

Coarse–fine composite mechatronic systems face numerous challenges due to the structural complexity and diversification of multi-gimbals. The core goal of this manuscript is to address the issue of the coarse-fine composite mechatronic system stability of a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) multi-gimbal electro-optical pod using USM-VCM (ultrasonic motor and voice coil motor) mechatronic design, Euler dynamics modeling, and stability DOB (disturbance observer) control. In response to this problem, a Hall effect electromagnetic circuit and USM-VCM drive acquisition circuit are designed. A Euler dynamics model in the Cartesian coordinate system is built to derive the kinematics coupling compensation matrix and mechanical parameter optimization method between the gimbals. Finally, the model is substituted into the DOB suppression control, which can monitor and compensate the motion coupling between the coarse–fine composite mechatronic systems in real time. Results show that the disturbance suppression impact of the DOB method with the Euler optimization model and USM-VCM mechatronic design is increased by up to 90% compared to the PID (proportion integration differentiation) method and 20% better than the traditional DOB method.

This paper presents a multi-parameter model of an ultrasonic motor for speed control. Firstly, the model is divided into the steady-state part and the dynamic part, and then the speed mapping relationship of amplitude, frequency, phase difference is described by linear function, exponential function, and hyperbolic tangent function, respectively in steady-state modeling. The least-square transfer function identification is used in the dynamic velocity modeling. This paper also constructs a modeling flowchart from the discrete models to the state-space function based on the pairwise combination of parameters, which can realize the flexible control of different parameters. Finally, the error box diagram of the model and the comparison between the measured results and simulation ones both verify the effectiveness of the model.