Study on self-tuning pole assignment speed control of an ultrasonic motor

Ultrasonic motors have a heavy nonlinearity, which varies with driving conditions. The nonlinearity is a problem as an accurate motion actuator for industrial applications and it is important to eliminate the nonlinearity in order to improve the control performance. In general, complicated control strategies are used to deal with the nonlinearity of ultrasonic motors. This paper proposes a new speed control scheme for ultrasonic motors to overcome the nonlinearity employing a simplified self-tuning control. The speed control model which can reflect the main nonlinear characteristics is obtained using a system identification method based on the step response. Then, a pole assignment speed controller is designed. To avoid the influence of the motor’s nonlinearity on the speed control performance, a control parameters’ on-line self-tuning strategy utilizing the gain of the model is designed. The proposed control strategy is realized using a DSP circuit, and experiments prove the validity of the proposed speed control scheme.