Tracking performance improvements of an electrohydraulic Gough-Stewart platform using a fuzzy incremental controller

Purpose – Sinusoidal signals are often used as the inputs of the six degree of freedom (DOF) motion simulator platforms. The purpose of this paper is to propose a fuzzy incremental controller (FIC) to improve sinusoidal signal tracking performances of an electrohydraulic Gough-Stewart platform (GSP). Design/methodology/approach – An FIC is proposed to control an electrohydraulic GSP without any model parameters. The FIC output can be self-organized by only using the hydraulic actuator position information. The control rules are determined by a systematic deterministic method. Findings – Experimental results show that the proposed FIC is valid and can achieve better tracking performances compared with classical PID controller and a decoupling controller (a model-based controller). Originality/value – An FIC using a systematic deterministic rule-base determination method is proposed to improve sinusoidal signal tracking performances of electrohydraulic GSP.