Design and Fuzzy Control of a Moving Magnetic Levitation Device for 3D Manipulation of Small Objects

Magnetic levitation is an appropriate solution for noncontact 3D manipulation. Workspace of the previously proposed maglev systems are confined to a relatively small cube, and this severely limits application of this technology. In addition, most of the previously given mechanisms require design and application of a subsystem for unifying their magnetic field. In this paper, a moving magnet is implemented which results in horizontally extendable work space; moreover, the field unifying section is not needed since one electromagnet only is used. Further, details of the mechanism and finite element based design procedure of the magnet are presented. Dynamic equations of the system derived by finite element analysis of the magnetic field are highly nonlinear and non-affine with respect to the control input. Two decoupled Fuzzy logic based controllers are used to deal with the 3D manipulation of the ball. The designed controllers provide the system with the precise trajectory tracking capability and robust stability. Simulation results confirm the findings.