An experimental comparison between several pneumatic position control methods

In this paper an experimental comparison is made between six different techniques to control the position of a pneumatic actuator. Six different reference signals have been tested on each control technique. The methods considered are: (A) PID, (B) fuzzy, (C) PID with pressure feedback, (D) fuzzy with pressure feedback, (E) sliding mode and (F) neuro-fuzzy control. In the last method, proposed by the authors, the differential pressure sensor has been replaced by a neural network based estimator. Details of each control method and the results obtained are given and finally a global comparison is made with several critical considerations.