Proceedings of the 1997 IEEE International
Conference on Control Applications
MPOl 4:OO
Robust Adaptive Control of Direct Drive
Brushless DC Motors and Applications
to Robotic Manipulatorst
Hemant Melkote
Control/Robotics Research Laboratory ( C R R L )
Department of Electrical Engineering
Polytechnic University
Six Metrotech Center
Brooklyn, New York 11201
Abstract
Application of robust adaptive nonlinear control to
brushless DC motors is considered in this paper. The
advocated robust adaptive controller enjoys robustness
to parametric and dynamic uncertainties in the motor
dynamics. In addition, the controller can reject any
bounded disturbances acting on the motor. The con-
trolled variables are phase voltages which are designed
based on the backstepping technique. The closed-loop
stability of the system is shown using Lyapunov tech-
niques. The tracking errors are shown to be globally
uniformly bounded. The design procedure is shown to
be also applicable to multi-link manipulators actuated
by brushless DC motors. The control design may be
improved to achieve asymptotic tracking.
I. Introduction
Brushless (BLDC) DC motors are used in direct-drive
applications mainly due to their large torque produc-
ing capability. Compared to conventional DC motors,
they have no brushes or mechanical commutators which
eliminate the problems due to mechanical wear of the
moving parts [l,Z]. However, the brushless DC motor
constitutes a more difficult problem than its brushed
counterpart in terms of modeling and control system
design due to its multi-input nature and coupled non-
linear dynamics.
Several papers concerning modeling and control of
BLDC motors may be found in the literature. In [3],
a sliding mode observer based controller was designed
without the need for position and velocity sensors. In
[4],a sensorless approach to BLDC motor control was
presented. The motor model was treated in detail in
[1,5], and the effects of nonlinearities such as saturation
were included and the model experimentally verified.
*This work is supported in part by the U.S. Army Research Of-
fice under grant # DAAH04-93-G-0209 and by the NSF under
grant DMI-9413543.
0-7803-3876-6/97 $10.00 0 1997 IEEE 288
Hartford, CT October 5-7, 1997
Farshad Khorrami
A robust nonlinear control law for a brushless DC mo-
tor actuating a robotic arm was developed in [6]. The
controller accounts for the effects of saturation and re-
luctance variations, but requires measurements of rotor
acceleration. In [7], a tracking controller for the BLDC
motor was developed that yielded a global uniformly
ultimately bounded result on the tracking error. The
controller was robust to parametric uncertainties and
utilized full state feedback. More recently, a backstep-
ping based controller for the motor was developed in [Z]
with robustness to parameter uncertainties while yield-
ing global asymptotic stability. However, the control
designs advocated in [2,7] cannot compensate for mag-
netic saturation or resistance variations in the motor
dynamics.
In this paper, a robust adaptive controller is designed
for a BLDC motor using our design methodology pre-
sented in [8,9]. The novelty in the proposed approach as
compared to previous work lies in the development of a
voltage-level controller which is robust to load torque,
magnetic saturation, reluctance and resistance varia-
tions, and other dynamic uncertainties in the motor
model. The controller requires only two adaptation
parameters and utilizes full state feedback. The ad-
vocated approach is also applicable to open kinematic
chain multi-link manipulators driven by BLDC motors.
11. Modeling
The BLDC motor (or permanent magnet syn-
chronous motor) consists of a permanent magnet rotor
and stator windings which are sinusoidally distributed
(i.e., in the “Y” connection). A commutation block is
provided which uses position information (usually from
a resolver) for purposes of commutation. The dynam-
ics of the BLDC motor constitute a set of differential
equations with time-varying coefficients. These equa-
tions are transformed into a coordinate frame attached
to the rotor to eliminate the position dependence of
these coefficients, and such a transformation is known
in the literature as the Floquet (or Park) transforma-
tion. Applying this transformation, the resulting dy-
mamics (of the electrical subsystem, neglecting magnetic with a BLDC motor driving a rigid load in the vertical
saturation, are as follows: plane. The dynamics of the mechanical subsystem can
be written as

[&I = [; A] [:I+[ g[-+w-3+$](3)

2 A[ (4)
i&.herea, and ad are the quadrature and direct axis cur-
rmts, L , and Ld are transformed winding inductances, where J is the mechanical inertia and D is the viscous
A! is the winding resistance, npis the number of perma- damping factor. The load torque function (TL) when
nent magnet pole pairs, w is the rotor angular velocity, the motor is rotating a rigid link in the vertical plane
firTzis a positive constant, and U, and U d represent the is given by'
transformed winding voltages. The torque produced by
the motlor is given by
That is, 71 is bounded by a first-order polynomial in
its arguments and N I is an unknown positive constant.
The reference model to be tracked is given by
where Krl is a positive constant. In practical cases,
the constant KT2is usually much larger than Krl. The
actual phase currents (and voltages) may be obtained
by inverting the Park transformation.
When magnetic saturation is present, the Park trans- where "r" is a reference signal. To facilitate fur-
fcrmation may not be applied in general. It was shown ther development, we use the notation T' = i,,f =
in [l]that in the presence of magnetic saturation, the [e - 6 d w - WdIT and consider 7' to be the input to the
quantities L,, Ld, Krl and Kr2 may be modeled as system. Using our robust control design methodology
piecewise continuous functions of the phase currents in [8,9], the desired torque profile TA is designed as
different intervals of currents. Although this model ac-
counts for the effects of saturation accurately, it is some-
what cumbersome for control design purposes. There-
fore, to be able to take advantage of the Park trans-
formation, an alternative approach was suggested in
[6] wherein the parameters L,, Ld, K r l , and Krz in where ,8 is the adaptation gain to counter the effect of
thLe motor dynamics (1)-(2)are modeled as piecewise the uncertainties. The adaptation law is
constants in different intervals of current. Such an ap-
pioach enables us to retain the dynamics given by (1)
and (2) while including the effects of magnetic satura-
tion in the motor model. The desired approximation
tc the magnetic saturation characteristics may be ob- where P is the positive definite, symmetric solution to
tained by choosing sufficiently small current intervals. the Algebraic Ricatti Equation
In the following section, we describe the application
of the robust adaptive control scheme for a class of non-
linear systems [8,9] to the BLDC motor and to multi-
P A + ATP - 26P [y ][ 0 1 ]P+Q=O (9)
link manipulators actuated by BLDC motors. The elec-
tr3mechanical dynamics of the motor fall into the class with Q being a positive definite, symmetric matrix and
of systems known as the Special Strict Feedback Form 6 is given by
[8,9], to which our design procedure is applicable. The
proposed voltage level controller is robust t o both para-
metric and dynamic uncertainties and can also reject
unknown, bounded disturbances entering the system where the parameter p is chosen later.
(although we do not show it here). Finally, simula-
tion results and conclusions are presented in sections The stability properties are analyzed using the can-
I\' and V respectively. didate Lyapunov function
2
111. Control Design
v,
~
= zTpz"+rO(&p*) (11)
lWe consider the load torque and friction terms as dynamic
In this section, the control design methodology is out- uncertainties originating in the mechanical subsystem of the
lined for the BLDC motor. For brevity, we first start plant.

289
where ?!,* is the desired value of the adaptation gain
and ro is a positive number. Differentiating along the
trajectories of the system, we obtain an upper bound
for VI as
2
Vi L -(LiQ(Q) - ~-~<1~)11z11~
- go(P - P*)
- [4P*(1+ p ) - ( S + 2)] IIBTPZl12 TOP*^
+ 112BTPzII 131
I

+N (12)
where 7 is the torque tracking error and
Cl = ll[ p +Ill (13)
where x is a known function of its arguments and is
given by

The values of the desired control gains P* and < to

counter the effect of the uncertainties are assigned later.
x = K(A+BK) [ 21 + K B r + i .
Next, voltage inputs are designed using backstepping -(Ck!BTP+ 2 P B T P ) ( - B b d + A,?).
and the robust control methodology such that the elec- (24)
trical subsystem produces the currents that in turn The current tracking error dynamics may be obtained
produce the desired torque signal. Hence, the desired by substituting (23) into (21). The stability of the
torque signal is used as the tracking objective for the overall system is investigated using the augmented Lya-
electrical subsystem. Since the desired torque signal is punov function
given by
v2= vl + 1 :
+ (;,)'I + rl(i- s ) ~ (25)

we need t o ensure that the desired currents zqd and i d d where iis the estimate of c required to counter the
produce the required torque. To this end, the following effect of the disturbances and I71 is a positive number.
commutation scheme is employed: Differentiating along the trajectories of the system, we
have
idd =0 , iqd = TA (16)
and p in equation (10) is chosen such that -1 < p 5
v2 = vl + Giq + '&id + 2r1(i- c)?
2
% - 1. (A crude estimate of the quantity is suf- % 5 - ( L i Q ( Q ) - C-1<i2)11Z112 -go@ - P*)
ficient to choose the correct p.) The torque tracking
error is given by
- [4P*(1+ p ) - (c
- + 2)] IIBTPfl12+ a0/3*~
i
+N [Vq -i q R - n p L d i d w - K T 2 W - Lq6qd
L q

where the current tracking errors are denoted by

. .
+211BTPsllm
J KL1+ -[ v d - i d R
d:
+npLqiqw

1
1- + c)t.
I I

iq = 2q - Zqd , id = id -idd. (19) +2Ldl( BTPzl K~liq

J
2rl(j - (26)
Note that ?d = id. Therefore, using (18) in (la), we
have For brevity, define the function
2
VI 5 -(Lin(Q) - C-1C12)IIZ112 - go(P - P*)
- [4P*(1+ p ) - ( S + 2)] IIBTPz112+ goPX2

The voltage inputs are designed next to track these de-

sired phase currents. The current tracking error dy-
namics are given by
- .. ..
aq = aq - zqd

290
whlere the control gains Ki, i = 1 , . . . ,15 are all positive where z1 = 8, the vector of joint angles and z2 = 4,
x
with as given by (24), p as given by (27)' and ,8 given D(0) is the n x n positive definite symmetric inertia
by the adaptation law (8). The adaptation law for iis matrix, C(0,e),G(0), and F ( d ) are the n x 1 vectors
given by representing the Coriolis and centrifugal forces, gravity
n-1
loading and friction respectively. From physical consid-
erations, the unknown vector ib(x1, z 2 )may be bounded
by a second-order polynomial in the states as follows:
-r o1i. (30)
11@(~1,z2)ll F $0 + $111~11+ $211z1I2 (38)
The desired control gain p* and the design freedom s
are chosen along the derivation in [lo]: where $0,$1, and $2 are unknown constants. The ref-
erence model to be tracked is given by

id = A Z d +B[KZd + T ] (39)
where A and B are as in (37). Choosing p as

and using the Lyapunov function ( l l ) , the desired

torque profile vector is designed as
where CO > 0. With these values for p* and s, the
deri.vative of the Lyapunov function may be further 7; = KZd + r - aBTPZ - ,8BTPP [1+ Z T d ] (41)
bounded as
where P = z - z d and all other quantities have the usual
v2 -nv2 +Q (33) meaning. The adaptation law for ,b is given by
2
where
,8 = r-'(l + p)JIBTPZ112(1
+ 11P112) Ic(PTPP)"-'
(34) k=l

Therefore, the solutions converge to the compact set
-r;la0j (42)
where P is the solution t o the algebraic Ricatti equa-
+
tion (9), and 8 = a ( 1 p). Once the desired torque
profile is obtained, the final voltage level controllers are
then designed using backstepping and the robust con-
trol methodology to track the desired currents given
by the commutation law (16). Due to the nature of
the bound on the uncertainties (38), additional terms
of the form $;ll,Zll4 accumulate in the derivative of the
augmented Lyapunov function

which implies that the solutions are globally uniformly

bou:nded.
A. Application to Multi-Link Manipulators
The design methodology advocated here is also ap-
plicable to multi-link manipulators actuated by BLDC
motors. We briefly outline the design procedure in this
section. The dynamics of an n-link manipulator may
where ( i q ) j and (zd)j are the transformed phase cur-
rents for the 'j'-th joint motor. The effects of these
uncertainties are compensated for by injecting nonlin-
ear damping through the ,L?* term. The value of p* to
counter all these effects is assigned in the final step. The

[:;I
be written as resultant voltage level controller is able to compensate
for parametric and dynamic uncertainties in both the
= [ o0 In
o][;:]+[:]x mechanical subsystem (such as inertia, friction, gravity
and Coriolis effects) as well as in the electrical sub-
system (such as winding inductances and resistances).
The details are not presented here since it is rather
straightforward to derive from earlier results; however,
it is notationally cumbersome.

29 1
 IV. Simulation Results

The following parameters for the motor are used in

the ensuing simulations.

Units

Damping factor 0.0358

Pole pairs
Number of phases
K
71

KT2

L,
Ld mH
RI, R2 -0.1
0 2 4 6 6 10 12
l e (sermds)
Tnm
14 16 18

The reference model to be tracked is given by Figure 2: Tracking error using the robust adaptive con-
trol.
7T
ed(t) = - sin(t)(l - exp(-0.1t2)) (44)
2

which is a smooth start sinusoid. The actual values

of the parameters were assumed to be unknown in the
simulations. Figure 1 shows the tracking performance -5'
0
'
2
'
4
'
6
'
8
'
10 12
' '
14
'
16
"
I8 20
with the robust adaptive controller. The position error Time (semnds)

I . . , , , , , , ,

4'
0
"
2 4
"
6 8
"
10 12
"
14 16
'
18 20
1
Time (semnds)

Figure 3: Winding currents (in amps).

Figure 1: Desired (dashed) and actual (bold) rotor po-

sition trajectory (in radians).
is shown in Figure 2. The peak tracking error is about
1 milli-radian. The winding currents are depicted in
Figure 3. The adaptation of ,6 and care shown in Figure
4. The actual phase voltages are depicted in Figure 5.
To illustrate the robustness of the controller, satu-
ration was incorporated into the motor model. The
current interval was divided into five regions in which
piecewise constant values for L,, L d , K,, , and KT2with
a 20 % variation over the total range of current was
used. Note that these parameters are dynamic un-
certainties, since they are modeled as functions of the 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 I6 20
phase currents. In addition, terms of the form Asin(t) Tvne IsecOodS)

(where A is 30% of the nominal value of the param-

eters) were added to the inertia and damping factor. Figure 4: Adaptation of ,8 (above) and < (below).

292
 5, , , , , , , , . , ,

0 2 4 6 6 10 12 I4 (6 I6 20
4r , , , , rm I, d
, , , , ,

Figure 5: Phase voltages.

error has increased to about 3 milli-radians. The input
OS , , , , , , , , ,
Figure 6: Tracking error.
voltages are shown in Figure 7.
V. Conclusion
In this paper, we have shown the application of the
robust adaptive design methodology to BLDC motors.
The proposed control scheme compensates for para-
metric and dynamic uncertainties (such as saturation
and winding resistance) in the electromechanical sys-
tem while yielding a global uniform bounded result for
the tracking error. In addition, the controller can reject
any bounded disturbances entering the system. The de-
sign procedure is also applicable to multi-link manipu-
lators actuated by BLDC motors. The performance of
the controller is illustrated by means of simulations.
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293