Hardware in loop Simulation for Hydraulic Stewart Master-Slave System

A hardware in loop (HIL) simulation platform for a hydraulic Stewart master-slave system used for curved surface grinding work is developed. The communication between hydraulic Stewart force feedback joystick and the computer is realized by AD/DA card, which was used to improve and evaluate the performance of the real controller. The software built by MATLAB/simulink in the computer includes the functions such as the master cylinder controller, the slave hand virtual plant the slave cylinder controller and the bilateral controller, which is applied to improve and evaluate the performance of the real controller. A workspace based control strategy was performed to validate the system. Introduction HIL simulation is a dynamic test technique that provides a simulated environment for the real controller (hardware) under test, simulating the parts of the system that are not physically present with real-time plant model (software). Today, due to progress in digital computer technology, most control algorithms are implemented by embedded systems and through programming codes in a digital manner. Sensors are responsible for measuring the system output parameters[1,2,3]. Therefore, an HIL simulation platform which may simulat a full-scale model of the system is of great requirement. Stiffness; therefore, studies are now focusing on hydraulic actuators. The hydraulic force feedback manipulator differs from electronically actuated ones in that the force or torque output is not proportional to the actuator current, and therefore, the force feedback control method differs considerably. Kudomi and Yamada established a hydraulically driven Stewart master-slave force feedback system [4,5,6]. Chen [7] and Hou [8] used an F-P algorithm to develop a new force feedback control method for a hydraulic force feedback system with 2-DOF hydraulic joysticks as a master hand and an engineering robot as a slave hand. Force-feedback manipulators actuated by electric motors do not provide adequate position accuracy and feedback force An HIL system is developed for the hydraulic Stewart master-slave system, which may shorten development cycle, improve reliability and quality of the controller, is presented. In this paper, we introduced the HIL system in Section 2, and then the HIL software in simulink platform was introduced in Section 3; an experiment is complemented to test its function in Section 4.