Advanced motion control for next-generation precision mechatronics: Challenges for control, identification, and learning

Manufacturing equipment and scientific instruments, including wafer scanners, printers, microscopes, and medical imaging scanners, require accurate and fast motions. Increasing requirements necessitate enhanced control performance. The aim of this paper is to identify several challenges for advanced motion control originating from these increasing accu- racy, speed, and cost requirements. For instance, flexible mechanics must be explicitly addressed through overactuation, oversensing, inferential control, and position-dependent control. This in turn requires suitable models of appropriate complexity, which are identified and learned from inexpensive experimental data. Several ongoing developments are outlined that constitute a part of an overall framework for control, identification, and learning of complex motion systems. In turn, this may pave the way for new mechatronic design principles, leading to fast lightweight machines where the spatio-temporal flexible mechanics are explicitly compensated through advanced motion control.