An Adaptive Model Predictive Control Approach for Position Tracking and Force Control of a Hydraulic Actuator

This paper presents an Adaptive Model Predictive Control (AMPC) approach for the position tracking and force control of a hydraulic actuator (HA). Due to its nonlinear dynamics, the iterative linearization paradigm is employed to approximate the HA system by a linear time-varying model. Such a representation is used as the internal plant model of the predictive controller to effectively make predictions on the system state. The effectiveness of the proposed AMPC architecture is shown through numerical experiments addressing the control of a real HA on different scenarios. Finally, a comparative analysis on several values of sampling time, prediction and control horizon is carried out in order to investigate the effect of the parameters tuning on the performance of the closed-loop control system.