With the rapid development of electrified transportation, there has been a growing demand for high-dynamic and high-precision Electro-Mechanical Actuation (EMA) servo drives in the aviation field. However, EMA applications face more severe multi-source disturbances than industrial servo drives. This issue has received extensive attention in the aviation field. Active Disturbance Rejection Control (ADRC) is a novel control structure that employs disturbance suppression. ADRC does not rely on an accurate model, exhibiting robustness to uncertainties.
Recently, Chunqiang Liu from Xidian University published an article on the active disturbance rejection control of electro-mechanical actuation servo drives. This article focuses on ADRC-based servo control and summarizes the main challenges and existing solutions for aviation EMA servo drives. Firstly, multiple disturbances in electro-mechanical servo systems are analyzed, then the disturbance rejection methods for the current loop and position loop are summarized, and finally, the development trends of aviation electro-mechanical servo control are addressed, along with the challenges faced by servo control.
The team published their work in Chinese Journal of Aeronautics (Vol. 38, Issue 7, 2025).
The research provides a comprehensive overview, examining how ADRC can be applied effectively at different levels of the control system – from the high-level position loop (ensuring something moves exactly where it should) down to the electrical current loop (managing the motor's core power) – to suppress disturbances comprehensively. The core message emerging from this research is the significant promise of ADRC for revolutionizing aviation servo drives. Unlike traditional methods that might struggle with complex, unpredictable real-world disturbances, ADRC takes a fundamentally different approach: ADRC cleverly estimates the total disturbances in real-time, whether they come from electrical parameters or changing loads. Once estimated, ADRC generates a precise counter-signal to actively cancel out these disturbances before they can degrade performance. This proactive disturbance rejection directly translates to the holy grail of servo control: significantly enhanced control bandwidth (faster response), superior steady-state positioning accuracy (pinpoint control), and improved overall efficiency.
While ADRC shows immense potential, the research also highlights the hurdles scientists and engineers are actively working to overcome: Online adaptation of the ADRC control system's bandwidth, optimal ADRC servo control under multiple constraints and high-order time-varying disturbances suppression. Seamlessly integrating ADRC into existing complex aircraft control architectures and ensuring its robustness under all flight scenarios requires further development. Extensive testing on actual flight hardware under realistic operational stresses is the crucial next step beyond simulation and lab work.
The ultimate goal of the aviation electro-mechanical actuation system is to develop high-performance, ultra-reliable and highly efficient solutions to achieve: more sensitive unmanned aircraft and critical flight control surface systems, quieter and more reliable cabin and cargo compartment mechanisms, while improving energy efficiency and reducing energy consumption.
Other contributors include Guangzhao Luo, Zhe Chen from the School of Automation at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Shaanxi, China; Xiaofeng Ding from the Automation Science and Electrical Engineering at Beihang University in Beijing, China.
Original Source
Chunqiang LIU, Guangzhao LUO, Zhe CHEN, Xiaofeng DING. Overview on active disturbance rejection control for electro-mechanical actuation servo drive [J]. Chinese Journal of Aeronautics, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cja.2024.11.002.
About Chinese Journal of Aeronautics
Chinese Journal of Aeronautics (CJA) is an open access, peer-reviewed international journal covering all aspects of aerospace engineering, monthly published by Elsevier. The Journal reports the scientific and technological achievements and frontiers in aeronautic engineering and astronautic engineering, in both theory and practice. CJA is indexed in SCI (IF = 5.7, Q1), EI, IAA, AJ, CSA, Scopus.
