Hard Disk Drives

Funding: Seagate

Robust Control of Dual-Stage Drives: A typical hard disk drive (HDD) works by spinning a magnetic disk while the magnetic head reads/writes data from/to circular tracks on the disk. Modern hard drives utilize a dual stage actuator system consisting of a voice coil motor and a micro actuator. The robust control framework is used to design a single controller that provides stability and performance for all drives within a single product line. The objective of this research is two-fold. First, computational tools are being created to automate the construction of uncertainty models from frequency response data. Second, design and analysis tools are being developed to account for temperature variations.
Graduate Student: Masanori Honda (Publications)