Abstract: In order to study the position control of hydraulic cylinder using high speed on/off valve (HSV), a hydraulic loop was designed based on HSV and directional valve for the hydraulic cylinder control, and pulse width modulation (PWM) was used to drive the HSV. An off-line simulation model of the control system was established with simulink software, and the simulation of position tracking was carried out by PID with Kalman filter. A test bench of system was established for hardware-in-the-loop simulation based on Matlab/xPC target. The simulation and experimental results show that the proposed system structure is correct and the proposed control algorithm can achieve high precision of hydraulic position, and the efficiency of control system's design can be improved by hardware-in-the-loop simulation.