Fuzzy PID and Contour Tracking as Applied to Position Control of a Pneumatic Gantry Robot

In previous work, the performance of PID plus an adaptive neural network compensator (ANNC) was compared with the performance of a novel fuzzy adaptive PID algorithm, as applied to position control of one axis of a pneumatic gantry robot. The fuzzy PID controller was found to be superior. In this paper, a simplified non-adaptive fuzzy algorithm was applied to the control of both axes of the robot. Individual step results are first shown to confirm the validity of the simplified fuzzy PID controller. The fuzzy controller is then applied to a sinuosoidal tracking problem with and without a fuzzy PD tracking algorithm. Initial results are considered to be very promising. Future work requires developing an adaptive version of the controller in order to demonstrate robustness relative to changing tracking frequencies and changing supply pressures.