WORKSHOP

To pay the fee for attending is available via the conference registration system.

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Performance of Nonlinear Control Systems

Contributors:
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- Dr. Marcel Heertjes (ASML, Veldhoven, the Netherlands)
- Dr. Alexey Pavlov (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway)
- Dr. Nathan van de Wouw (Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, the Netherlands)
- Prof. Henk Nijmeijer (Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, the Netherlands)

Contents:
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This workshop deals with the performance analysis and performance oriented design of nonlinear control systems.
The success of linear (motion) control technology in industry is largely due to the fact that the performance of these control systems in terms of the sensitivity to disturbances (such as external disturbances or measurement noise) can easily be analyzed using frequency-domain techniques. In this context, one can think of the motion control of printers, optical storage drives, robots etc. However, in the field of nonlinear control, the focus has largely been on ensuring mere stability of the closed-loop system through mostly state-space techniques. Therefore, quantitative performance analysis methods for such nonlinear control systems – similar to the frequency-domain techniques for linear systems – are needed to develop design tools for high-performance nonlinear controllers. In this workshop we aim to present a methodology to assess the performance of nonlinear control systems in the face of disturbances using frequency-domain techniques for so-called convergent nonlinear systems. Using these techniques, we can design nonlinear control systems that can yield better performance than linear control systems. The applicability of this approach will be illustrated by numerous industrial applications, such as the (variable-gain) motion control of stages in wafer scanners, objective lenses in optical storage and hard-disk drives, and the switching control of vibration isolators.

Topics:
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- Performance limitations in (nonlinear) control systems.
- Advanced stability theory for nonlinear systems with inputs: stability of nonlinear systems with time-varying inputs (disturbances, reference signals), convergent systems.
- Frequency-domain analysis techniques for convergent nonlinear systems.
- Computational techniques to access frequency-domain properties for convergent nonlinear systems.
- Tools for nonlinear controller synthesis with the aim to improve upon the servo performance of nominal linear motion controllers.
- Benefits of nonlinear (variable gain) control by studying a range of industrial examples.