Nonlinear adaptive control of direct-drive brushless DC motors and applications to robotic manipulators

Robust adaptive nonlinear control of brushless DC (BLDC) motors is considered. A controller is designed for the plant that is robust to parametric and dynamic uncertainties in the entire electromechanical system. These uncertainties are shown to be bounded by polynomials in the states. In addition, the controller can reject any bounded unmeasurable disturbances entering the system. A model for the motor incorporating magnetic saturation is used to design voltage-level control inputs for the motor. The design methodology is based on our earlier work on adaptive control of nonlinear systems. The overall stability of the system is shown using Lyapunov techniques. The tracking error is shown to be globally uniformly bounded. The design procedure is shown to be also applicable to multilink manipulators actuated by BLDC motors. The performance of the controller is verified through simulations and comparisons with a proportional-integral-derivative-type controller are made.