Robust Position Control of a Magnetic Levitation System via Dynamic Surface Control Technique

This paper considers the position-tracking problem of a magnetic levitation system in the presence of modeling errors due to uncertainties of physical parameters. A robust nonlinear controller is designed to achieve excellent position-tracking performance. The recently developed dynamic surface control is modified and applied to the system under study, to over-come the problem of "explosion of terms" associated with the backstepping design procedure. Input-to-state stability of the control system is analyzed, and the advantages of the dynamic surface control technique over the conventional backstepping technique are verified through both theoretical and experimental studies.