A novel rotary dual-stage actuator positioner

This paper presents the design and control of a rotary dual-stage actuator (DSA) system, which consists of a voice coil motor (VCM) and a piezoelectric (PZT) microactuator. The performance of the mechanical design is analyzed using a finite element method (FEM) software, whose simulation results are validated experimentally. A nonlinear tracking control is applied to the developed DSA platform for reduced settling time and improved disturbance rejection. Experimental results demonstrate that the applied control design reduces the settling time by up to 50% when compared to a conventional design. Moreover, it is shown that the DSA system can achieve an improvement of 80% regarding disturbance rejection when compared to a single-stage actuator.