Digital Servo Systems Short Course

Practical on-site course for servo, mechanical and electrical engineers
and technical managers

This practical and comprehensive three day course will enable you to rapidly become proficient in the use of state-of-the-art digital and adaptive control techniques to design competitive high performance robust servomechanical products. Students profit from a very interactive and interdisciplinary classroom environment. By scheduling this course on-site, attendees are able to freely discuss proprietary design issues and receive expert advice.

This is by far the most comprehensive course on digital control available to industry today. This state-of-the-art course has evolved over a 12 year period and has been taught to over a thousand engineers and managers in the storage, aerospace and other industries.

Dr. Sidman is a recognized leader in both servo system product development and applied research. As a pioneer in high performance digital servo systems with 25 years of experience, he brings a practical perspective and unique interdisciplinary approach that unite a design team's diverse skills. Participants also benefit from Dr. Sidman's extensive experience in the simulation and optimization of dynamic systems.

Course Description

This digital servo course provides a comprehensive examination of the advantages and tradeoffs of practical digital control techniques, bringing together mechanical, electrical and control system dynamics. The course covers classical and modern control fundamentals, performance optimization techniques, and practical considerations in the application of state-of-the-art control techniques. In-depth case studies are used throughout the course. Participants each receive about 400 pages of course notes containing MATLAB scripts, case studies and examples.

The Course Outline includes: Insights into S-Plane, Z-Plane and Discrete-Time Systems, Insights into Root Locus and Bode Plot Design, Seek Performance and Velocity Profile Design, State-Space Design Methods and Analysis, State-Space Model of a High Performance Actuator, Digital Control of a Lightly Damped Actuator, Issues in Implementation of Digital Control Systems, Automatic Bias Torque Correction, Feedforward Repetitive Disturbance Correction, Active Control of Shock, Vibration and Windup, System Identification Techniques and Examples, Self Tuning Adaptive Control Methods, High Performance State Estimators, Actuation and Sensing Strategies, and Simulation and Optimization of Digital Servo Systems.

A variant of this course entitled Digital Servo Systems Short Course for Disk Drives focuses on the unique problems of head positioning digital servo control in contemporary magnetic disk drives (HDD's), capitalizing on Dr. Sidman's 25 years experience and 17 patents in the disk drive industry.

Course Features

Customized on-site instruction
Advice on client's specific design issues
Resolution of design controversies
Practical application and trade-offs of digital control techniques
Unifies mechanical, electrical and control system dynamics
Classical and modern digital control fundamentals
Practical adaptive methods for performance enhancement
Design technique caveats and solutions
MATLAB/SIMULINK based class examples

Application Areas

Magnetic and optical disk drive servo systems
Computer system peripherals
Motion control applications
Motor control and drives
Rotating machines
Flexible structures
Vibration control
Machine tool control
High performance DSP-based servo systems
Aerospace and naval control systems
Automotive control systems
Electromechanical systems and products

Who Should Attend?

This course is intended for engineers and technical managers involved in digital servo controlled positioning system product design. Those most benefiting include mechanical, electrical and control system designers of digital servo systems, drive mechanics, real time/DSP hardware and software, and those wishing to keep abreast of rapidly evolving control technology. Whether you are controlling milliwatts or hundreds of horsepower, your engineers will benefit from Dr. Sidman's extensive experience as have the over 600 engineers and managers worldwide who have attended this course.

The Instructor

Dr. Sidman is an independent engineering consultant with 30 years of practical industrial design experience. He is an expert in digital servo systems and disk drive head positioning servo control, with roles spanning product design, advanced development and applied research. He is the named inventor on 18 U.S. patents, author of many technical papers and received a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1986. As Digital Equipment Corporation's top servo systems guru, Dr. Sidman was responsible for developing novel servomechanical technology for disk drives and headed the Storage Division's Servo-Mechanical Advanced Development Group. The Adaptive Runout Correction System (ARCS) developed by Dr. Sidman in 1977-78 is considered to be the first use of digital signal processing in a disk drive. Dr. Sidman also pioneered and demonstrated disk drive shock and vibration correction using an HDA mounted angular accelerometer and the use of high bandwidth microactuators in HDDs over ten years ago. Dr. Sidman is a Senior Member of the IEEE and a Member of the ASME and has been a consultant to and Third Party Provider for The MathWorks since 1994. He founded his engineering consulting business in 1989 and is listed in Marquis Who'sWho in Science and Engineering 1998-1999.

Need a comprehensive, open architecture Design Tool for Rapid Disk Drive Servo System Development?

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