An Optimized Speed Controller for Electrical Thrusters in an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

Abstract

This paper focuses on the development of a prototype of thruster motor speed controller  which exhibits robust performance for an Autonomous underwater vehicle. H infinity based speed controller with particle swarm optimized weights for a sensorless BLDC motor which is used as electrical thruster has been simulated in MATLAB/ SIMULINK and implemented using TI C2000 Delfino LaunchPad LaunchXL-F28377S and BoostXL DRV 8301. A performance comparison in reference tracking has been done with conventional PI controller and experimental results have been discussed in detail. The percentage variation in speed with respect to reference speed of proposed strategy has been observed to be 0.65% whereas it is 1.1% with PI controller. It has also been found that the proposed control strategy exhibits smooth starting with better reference tracking and less torque ripples.