Design of a Robust Position Tracking Controller with Sliding Mode for a 6-DOF Micropositioning Stage

As high precision industries such as semiconductor, TFT-LCD manufacturing and MEMS continue to grow, the demand for higher DOF precision stages has been increasing. In general, the stages should accommodate a prescribed range of payloads in order to position various precision manufacturing/inspection instruments. Therefore a nonlinear controller using sliding motion is developed, which bears mass perturbation and makes the upper plate of the stage move in 6 DOF. For the application of the nonlinear control, an observer is also developed based on expected noise covariance. To eliminate the steady state error of step response, integral terms are inserted into the state-space model. The linear term of the controller is designed using optimization scheme in which parameters can be weighted according to their physical significance, whereas the nonlinear term of the controller is designed using trial and error method. A comprehensive simulation study proves that the designed controller is robust against mass perturbation and completely eliminates steady state errors.