In order to achieve high-precision pneumatic cylinder friction test, this paper proposes a new direct measurement method based on electric cylinder in which the axially acting forces from the compressed air in the two facing pneumatic cylinders cancel each other out and the detected value of the force transducer is just friction. For the sake of the implementation of the method, a new low-cost test method for identifying deadband of proportional directional valve was proposed, and a set of fuzzy PI constant pressure control system was designed to cope with a certain degree of leakage in the chamber. Based on the above, a friction test platform with two pneumatic cylinders facing each other was eventually built to study the influence of pressure, pressure difference, and piston speed on the friction of two commonly used different types of pneumatic cylinders. Through multiple sets of tests, it is found that when the lip seals are used in pairs between the piston and the inner wall of the cylinder, the friction between the piston and the cylinder is only related to the sum of the two chamber pressures, but not to the pressure difference between the two chambers. When the O-ring seal is used between the piston and the inner wall of the cylinder, the friction between the piston and the cylinder is related not only to the pressure of the two chambers, but also to the pressure difference between the two chambers. In addition, a series of comparative tests with the traditional single-cylinder friction test method directly demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed new method.

An adaptive dynamic surface controller (ADSC), which comprises an online parameter estimator and a robust control law, is developed for the pneumatic servo systems driven by the proportional directional control valves. Departing from the use of time-consuming offline fitting of the orifice area to accommodate the effect of valve dead zone, this paper employs the least-square-type indirect parameter estimation algorithm with online condition monitoring to estimate the dead-zone parameters and some other important model parameters. These accurate estimates of model parameters are utilized in the development of a precise position tracking controller for the single-rod pneumatic actuator. By using the dynamic surface control technique to synthesize the robust control law, the problem of “explosion of complexity” in traditional backstepping design method is avoided. The stability of the closed-loop system is proved by the means of the Lyapunov theory. The obtained extensive comparative experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed valve dead-zone compensation strategy and the high-performance nature of the ADSC in practical implementation.

In this paper, the needle insertion motion control of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) compatible robot, which is actuated by a pneumatic cylinder with long transmission lines, is considered and a pressure observer based adaptive dynamic surface controller is proposed. The long transmission line is assumed to be an intermediate chamber connected between the control valve and the actuator in series, and a nonlinear first order system model is constructed to characterize the pressure losses and time delay brought by it. Due to the fact that MRI-compatible pressure sensors are not commercially available, a globally stable pressure observer is employed to estimate the chamber pressure. Based on the model of the long transmission line and the pressure observer, an adaptive dynamic surface controller is further designed by using the dynamic surface control technique. Compared to the traditional backstepping design method, the proposed controller can avoid the problem of “explosion of complexity” since the repeated differentiation of virtual controls is no longer required. The stability of the closed-loop system is analytically proven by employing the Lyapunov theory. Extensive experimental results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and the performance robustness of the proposed controller.

We present a novel indirect adaptive fuzzy-regulated optimal control scheme for continuous-time nonlinear systems with unknown dynamics, mismatches, and di