Automatic Robust Control Design for a Laboratory System

This paper presents the developed Matlab toolbox for efficient robust controller design and its verification for a real laboratory system (magnetic levitation). The presented toolbox follows all the steps of the control design including choice of the operating point, creation of the uncertain system model, selection of the controller design method, simulation of the designed closed-loop, real experiment on the laboratory system and finally visualization and comparison of the results. Linear matrix inequality (LMI) based robust control methods as well as standard ones based on Neimark D-partition have been considered. The toolbox is illustrated for laboratory Magnetic Levitation System (MLS), due to its modular and open structure, it can be easily modified for other systems or extended by other control design methods.