  Biaxial motion control systems are used extensively in manufacturing and
printing industries. To improve throughput and reduce machine cost, lightweight
materials are being proposed in structural components but may result in higher
flexibility in the machine links. This flexibility is often position dependent
and compromises precision of the end effector of the machine. To address the
need for improved contouring accuracy in industrial machines with
position-dependent structural flexibility, this paper introduces a novel
contouring error-bounded control algorithm for biaxial switched linear systems.
The proposed algorithm utilizes model predictive control to guarantee the
satisfaction of state, input, and contouring error constraints for any
admissible mode switching. In this paper, the switching signal remains unknown
to the controller, although information about the minimum time the system is
expected to stay in a specific mode is considered to be available. The proposed
algorithm has the property of recursive feasibility and ensures the stability
of the closed-loop system. The effectiveness of the proposed method is
demonstrated by applying it to a high-fidelity simulation of a dual-drive
industrial laser machine. The results show that the contouring error is
successfully bounded within the given tolerance.
