An active disturbance rejection control solution for the two-mass-spring benchmark problem

The feasibility of a systematic and effective control design for highly uncertain dynamic systems is tested on the well-known two-mass-spring benchmark problem, based on the active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) framework. The proposed solution is obtained in the absence of a detailed mathematical model, in contrast to all previous model-based solutions. In addition to meeting the design criteria, the simplicity and ease of tuning make the resulting control algorithm appealing to practicing engineers. Furthermore, it is shown in this paper that even though ADRC doesn't require detailed mathematical model of the plant, it can take advantage of it if one is given. By incorporating the model information into the ADRC solution, the observer bandwidth and noise sensitivity can be reduced without performance degradation, thus making the solution more practically appealing. The proposed design is also shown to be insensitive to various uncertainties, such as model parameters variations, in both simulation and hardware experiment.