Robust adaptive control scheme for improving low-speed profile tracking performance of hybrid stepping motor servo drive

A robust adaptive control approach is presented to improve the performance of the control scheme proposed in the authors' previous work, aiming at producing a low ripple hybrid stepping motor servo drive for precision profile tracking at a low speed. In order to construct a completely integrated control design philosophy to reduce torque ripple and at the same time to enhance tracking performance, the properties of nonlinear uncertainties in the system dynamics are uncovered, and then incorporated into the design of the controller. The system uncertainties concerned with ripple dynamics and other external disturbances are composed of two categories. The first category of uncertainties with linear parameterization arising from the detention effect is dealt with by the well-known adaptive control method. A robust adaptive method is used to deal with the second category of uncertainties resulting from the non-sinusoidal flux distribution. The μ-modification scheme is used to cease parameter adaptation by the robust adaptive control law, thus ensuring that the trajectory tracking error asymptotically converges to a pre-specified boundary. Experiments are performed with a typical hybrid stepping motor to test its profile tracking accuracy. Results confirm the proposed control scheme.