An Approach to a Speed Estimation Method to Remove Speed Sensor of Underwater Robot's AC Drive Systems

수중로봇용 AC구동시스템의 속도센서 제거를 위한 속도추정법 연구

This paper describes an approach to a speed estimation method to remove speed sensor of underwater robot's AC drive systems. AC motors have been widely used in the field of underwater robot's manipulator or propulsion system. Most of these AC motors for underwater use have usually filled oil to compensate the high pressure in deep-sea operation, where a resolver is adopted to feed back the speed of rotor But this kind of speed feedback devices gives rise to some defects arising from their mechanical complexity and numerous signal lines; a resolver needs 6 or 7 signal lines for proper operation. This paper presents a speed estimation method to improve these problems of induction motor, which is adopted as a prototype of AC motor. The proposed speed estimation method is based on the RFO(rotor flux orientation) vector control method of voltage-fed AC drives. Using the controller of voltage-fed AC drives, it is unnecessary to measure the voltage for the estimation of rotor speed, which reduces the effects of measurement error Numerical simulation is carried out to investigate the validity of the method and the effects of rotors resistance variation.