High dynamic output feedback robust control of hydraulic flight motion simulator using a novel cascaded extended state observer

High dynamic tracking performance is a key technical index of hydraulic flight motion simulator (HFMS). However, the strong nonlinearities, various model uncertainties and measurement noise in hydraulic actuation systems limit the high dynamic performance improvement. In this paper, the outer axis frame of a HFMS is taken as a case study and its nonlinear dynamic model with consideration of strong nonlinearities, matched and mismatched uncertainties is established. A novel cascaded extended state observer (ESO) is proposed to estimate the unavailable system states to avoid the adverse effect of measurement noise on control performance. Meanwhile, the designed cascaded ESO also produces estimates of matched and mismatched uncertainties. Then, an output feedback robust controller (OFRC) is proposed by integrating the cascaded ESO with a robust integral of the sign of the error (RISE) feedback based on the backstepping framework. The proposed controller achieves compensation of both matched and mismatched model uncertainties in an output feedback form. Theoretical analysis indicates that the proposed OFRC ensures the boundedness of all closed-loop system signals in the presence of matched and mismatched time-varying model uncertainties. Excellent asymptotic tracking performance can also be obtained when the model uncertainties are time-invariant. Comparative experimental results show that the proposed OFRC achieves significant performance improvement compared with the extensively employed PI control with velocity feedforward (VFPI).