Saliency-Based Sensorless Drive of an Adequately Designed IPM Motor for Robot Vehicle Application

Abstract

Technology fusion between motor design and control can produce new applications. This paper introduces a saliency-based sensorless drive of adequate designed IPM motor for a specific application in a robot vehicle. The motor is deliberately designed to meet the requirements of robot application and lend itself better for saliency based sensorless control. The speed and position of multiple wheel-motors are synchronously controlled by the drive amplifiers and a single motion controller over the speed range from zero to maximum speed for the robot vehicle application. Finally, two types of robot vehicles, one being a two-wheeled differential drive and the other being an omni directional drive, are developed to transport objects and human. This paper mainly focuses on the concept of motor design and its control. Some analysis and test data are given in this paper.