Adaptive Closed-loop Speed Control of BLDC Motors with Applications to Multi-rotor Aerial Vehicles

TitleAdaptive Closed-loop Speed Control of BLDC Motors with Applications to Multi-rotor Aerial Vehicles
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication2017
AuthorsFranchi, A, Mallet, A
Conference Name2017 IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation
Date Published05/2017
Conference LocationSingapore
Abstract

This paper introduces the adaptive bias and adaptive gain (ABAG) algorithm for closed-loop electronic speed control (ESC) of the brushless direct current (BLDC) motors typically used to spin the propellers in multi-rotor aerial robots. The ABAG algorithm is adaptive and robust in the sense that it does not require the knowledge of any mechanical/electrical parameter of the motor/propeller group and that neither a pre-calibration nor the knowledge of the feedforward/nominal input is needed. The ABAG algorithm is amenable to an extremely low complexity implementation. We experimentally prove that it can run in 27.5 μs on a 8 MHz microcontroller with no floating point unit and limited arithmetic capabilities allowing only 8-bit additions, subtractions and multiplications. Besides the controller implementation we present a self-contained open source software architecture that handles the entire speed control process, including clock synchronization, and over- current and blockage safeties. The excellent performance and robustness of ABAG are shown by experimental tests and aerial physical interaction experiments.

Citation Key2017c-FraMal
AttachmentSize
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