Pulse width control refers to the use of a control law to determine the duration of fixed-height force pulses for point-to-point position control of a plant that is subject to mechanical friction, including stiction. A quantitative measure of the performance of a pulse width control system is introduced. Applications of this measure suggest that piecewise-linear-gain pulse width control laws will often provide better performance than constant-gain pulse width control laws. A method for designing piecewise-linear-gain pulse width control laws is introduced. The performance measure and piecewise-linear-gain control law design method are demonstrated in applications to the control of the position of the end-effector of an industrial robot.

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3.
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