Today, a cascaded system of position loop, velocity loop and current loop is standard in industrial motion controllers. The exact knowledge of significant parameters in the loops is the basis for the tuning of the servo controllers. A new method to support the commissioning has been developed. It enables the user to identify the moment of inertia as well as the time constant of the closed current loop simultaneously. The method is based on the auto relay feedback experiment by Aström and Hägglund. The model parameters are automatically adjusted according to the time behaviour of the controlled system. For this purpose, the auto relay feedback experiment is combined with the technique of gradual pole compensation. In comparison to other existing methods, this approach has the advantage that a parametric model for the open velocity loop is derived directly.

The paper presents the control concept for an experimental rig with closed-loop controlled pneumatic axis. The objective is the convenient execution of diverse control technologic experiments using free implementable control structures. Since two actuators can be mechanically linked to one another, one is force controlled to generate defined disturbances. Furthermore, a particular simulation model, which can be integrated in the controllers' user program, is pointed out including non-linear effects. Finally, selected experiments are discussed.

The paper presents an adapted least squares identification method for reduced-order parametric models. On the example of the open velocity loop, different model approaches were implemented in a motion control system. Furthermore, it is demonstrated how the accuracy of the method can be improved. Finally, experimental results are shown.