The future of electric drives: where are we headed?

A key dimension for the future of motor drives is to make them reliable, value-added parts of a system. Reliability of motor drives is far from a resolved issue. The failure of drives has been attributed to many causes, but one of the dominant ones is "misuse" in the application. While this may not seem like a drives problem, it actually represents one of our biggest opportunities for value-added engineering of drives. In essence, future drives need to be designed to live and function despite ongoing abuse. This may seem trivial, but the resolution of such application specific problems has vexed even the best of drive suppliers. This research domain is not simply another application of neural networks or fuzzy logic. Instead it will rely on smart drive research engineers who develop drives such that they avoid operating conditions which are not compatible with sustained operation and continue doing their main function, despite their lack of full knowledge of the load. This paper begins to unfold a vision of this future set of challenges.