Design and control of the electrostatic suspension system for flexible objects

Electrostatic suspension is a method to levitate an object by using electrostatic forces. Its main advantage is to levitate objects without any mechanical contact which fulfills the requirement of an object handling in ultra clean environment. In this paper, the electrostatic suspension system for film-like thin plate such as aluminum sheet, is designed and controlled. In contrast with the conventional electrostatic suspension system which requires the costly and bulky high-voltage amplifiers, it is suggested to use the switching voltage control method in consideration of real industrial application for the handling of such flexible bodies. Some experimental results show that the developed electrostatic suspension system shows good performances to levitate flexible film-like thin plate.