Adaptive dead-time compensation with application to a robotic welding system

The paper proposes a paradigm for control design suitable for poorly modeled plants with signi cant dead time An adaptive dead time compensator is developed which is substantially dif ferent to the standard Smith predictor and more generally applicable in practice A framework is developed for selecting the controller parameters using now stan dard design techniques such as synthesis It is argued that adaptation allows for exact set point matching without the need for integration in the control law Stability and convergence results are established for the resulting closed loop sys tem equations The proposed adaptive dead time compensator is compared with a standard robust controller and an adaptive pole placement controller through experiments on a gas metal arc welding testbed