The paper presents the controller design for a high-force short-stroke linear actuator using permanent magnets as excitation. For the desired application a very high dynamic is required despite the presence of large disturbances. After the model description, a flatness based control is presented to force the system following a reference trajectory. Additionally, an adaptive feedback control, based on the PID structure and state observer, is used to stabilize the tracking against model uncertainties and external disturbance signals. A heuristic algorithm in receding horizon by using wavelets for on-line tuning of the controller parameters is proposed. Simulations using real data have been carried out to validate the proposed technique.