| This dissertation describes the design, fabrication, position sensing, and control of an electrostatically-driven microactuator. The polysilicon microactuator, together with an on-chip electronic buffer, were fabricated by the Modular Integration of CMOS and microStructure (MICS) technology. The microactuator has a linear dimension of 300;An electro-mechanical model of the microactuator is developed, and the model is identified and verified through experimentation. Several design issues are addressed, including the analysis and design of polysilicon micromachined microactuator suspensions, and the design and implementation of sensing and control schemes which linearize the microactuator's input/output dynamics. Noise models for the microactuator and the sensing circuits are developed, which are used in the Kalman-filter-based position sensing scheme. A method to tune the observer gains in order to balance measurement accuracy, feedback control systems disturbance rejection, and robustness is tested. |
