Optimal design, fabrication, and control of an XY micropositioning stage driven by electromagnetic actuators

This paper presents the optimal design, fabrication, and control of a novel compliant flexure-based totally decoupled XY micropositioning stage driven by electromagnetic actuators. The stage is constructed with a simple structure by employing double four-bar parallelogram flexures and four noncontact types of electromagnetic actuators to realize the kinematic decoupling and force decoupling, respectively. The kinematics and dynamics modeling of the stage are conducted by resorting to compliance and stiffness analysis based on matrix method, and the parameters are obtained by multiobjective genetic algorithm (GA) optimization method. The analytical models for electromagnetic forces are also established, and both mechanical structure and electromagnetic models are validated by finite-element analysis via ANSYS software. It is found that the system is with hysteresis and nonlinear characteristics when a preliminary open-loop test is conducted; thereafter, a simple PID controller is applied. Therefore, an inverse Preisach model-based feedforward sliding-mode controller is exploited to control the micromanipulator system. Experiments show that the moving range can achieve 1 mm × 1 mm and the resolution can reach ± 0.4μm. Moreover, the designed micromanipulator can bear a heavy load because of its optimal mechanical structure.