In this work, simultaneous energy regeneration and motion control for robot manipulators with brushless direct current (BLDC) motors is considered. All joints of the robot are connected to regenerative drives powered from a single ultracapacitor. A new voltage based control method is developed to individually command each phase of the BLDC motor. Three independent regenerative drives are interconnected in a wye configuration, and each drives a phase of the motor. The objective is to determine the control inputs for each drive to minimize energy consumption from the ultracapacitor for a given motion task. To this end, the problem is formulated as constrained quadratic optimization problem that gives the control inputs based on the desired torque generated by a virtual controller. An experimental evaluation is performed using a pendulum actuated by a BLDC motor. It is shown that the suggested control method can accomplish the motion task and it is capable of energy regeneration. The results show a reduction of about 40% in energy consumption for the condition of the study, relative to non regenerative case.


Energy-Optimal, Direct-Phase Control of Brushless Motors for Robotic Drives

Division / Sponsors: 
Dynamic Systems & Control (DSCD)

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/DSCC/DSCC2020/volume/84270

DSCC2020 - Virtual Conference

Supporting the need among researchers worldwide for additional online and multimedia content, ASME now offers the ASME Conference Video Collection. This platform will collect and provide long-term access to conference presentation videos, encompassing all technology areas within ASME's technical conference and events program. About 30,000-40,000 engineers across all mechanical engineering and related disciplines participate in ASME conferences each year. This includes authors of approximately 6,000 to 8,000 technical papers published by ASME, the majority of whom also submit video presentations for our virtual conferences. The video collection will be available as an add-on to existing product packages or as a separate subscription.