Position control of a pneumatic surgical robot using PSO based 2-DOF H∞ loop shaping structured controller

Abstract This research proposed novel development of a 2-DOF H ∞ loop shaping structured controller based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) that considers the closed-loop dynamic response, robustness, stability, and minimal control input in design criteria to control position of 3-DOF pneumatic surgical robot. Unlike other conventional H ∞ controllers, the proposed controller offers robustness, high performance, but cost-effective simple structure, which has recently received attention from several researchers and preferred in industrial applications. The proposed technique is simulated and experimented on a nonlinear system of a pneumatic 3-DOF surgical robot for a Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS). Mechanical design, dynamics modeling, and system identification of the surgical robot are conducted. The simulation results verify that the proposed controller can gain a better H ∞ sub-optimal solution than the conventional 2-DOF H ∞ loop shaping controller. Also, the experiments confirm that the proposed controller is capable to tolerate the perturbed conditions and can be alternative to the conventional controllers in pneumatic controlled system