Abstract
This paper presents the sensorless position control of an auxiliary scaffolding step system for vehicles using DC motors. The designed auxiliary scaffolding step has a mechanical protector at the stop position. At this position, the scaffolding is forcibly stopped by the mechanical protector, and the motor current is dramatically increased to the stall current of the DC motor, thereby increasing the electrical damage. In this study, the estimated back EMF- and current model-based observers are proposed to estimate the motor speed and stop position. A simple V/F acceleration voltage pattern is used to operate the auxiliary scaffolding system. The estimated moving position is adopted to determine the stop position of the DC motor with the load current state. The operating current of the DC motor can be reduced by the estimated moving position and V/F acceleration pattern. At the stop position, the proposed sensorless position controller can smoothly stop the DC motor with the estimated moving position and reduced load current without any mechanical and electrical stress from the stall current from the mechanical protector. The proposed control scheme is verified by the comparison of simulations and experiments.
