IAES International Journal of Robotics and Automation (IJRA)

Vol. 10, No. 2, June 2021, pp. 144~148

ISSN: 2722-2586, DOI: 10.11591/ijra.v10i2.pp144-148  144

Wireless stepper motor control and optimization based on

robust control theory

Waleed Khalid Al-Azzawi

Medical Technical College, AI-Farahidi University, Baghdad, Iraq

Article Info ABSTRACT

Article history: Stepper motors are broadly utilized in actual systems, which are marked by
non-linear parameters such as internal, external noises and uncertainties from
Received Apr 9, 2020 wireless network. As well, a suitable controller is required when the problem
Revised Jan 10, 2021 is to track the target signal. In this paper, robust controller based on model
Accepted Feb 9, 2021 reference are investigated to wireless control and optimize position and time
in stepper motors. The core impression to build a robust controller is to use a
model reference control system. Furthermore, simulations are implemented
Keywords: to control stepper motor position and time in two cases: first, when the
wireless network without any delay and packet dropout. Second, uncertain
Model reference control equations when the wireless network with time delays and packet dropout.
Robust control Simulation results demonstrate that proposed controller has achieved and
Stepper motors enhanced the performance in tracking and robustness.
Uncertainty parameters
This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license.

Corresponding Author:
Waleed Khalid Al-Azzawi
Medical Technical College
AI-Farahidi University, Baghdad, Iraq
Email: [email protected]; [email protected]

1. INTRODUCTION
Hybrid stepper motor is a non-linear motor that has been investigated to rotate in specific angular
position. Any stepper motors (SMs) require conventional controllers for position and speed control. Thus,
SMs are currently utilized in manufacturing and different engineering applications. Recently, SM is widely
used in several motion control applications for example robotics, printers, and discrete control circuits.
Currently, numerous methods have been presented for positioning, speed control and obtained of appropriate
controller with wireless network in SM. It is important that a complex controller will be required due to
nonlinear structure of SM and wireless network, while output tracking problem is characterized. In recent
decades, adaptive algorithms have been applied to hybrid SM increased [1, 2]. Otherwise, the other
techniques such as PID controller [3, 4] and robust controller have been improved particularly for uncertain
parameters systems [5-7]. Similarly, numerous of the research focus on system identification and control
based on intelligent controller such as neural networks, genetic algorithms, and fuzzy logic [8-10].
The neural network is design based on back-propagation model and trained for SM identification. In
addition, integration of fuzzy logics and adaptive control is used to obtained required control signal [11-13].
Furthermore, used genetic algorithm and adaptive control is built for SM identification [14-16]. In contrast,
this paper designs a model reference robust controller for uncertain parameters in wireless network such as
time delay, minimizing distance and time in SM. In this paper, we use true-time tools based model reference
controller system in order to create a robust controller able to remove and minimize all uncertain parameters
of the wireless network SM model. It can be seen from the block diagram in Figure 1 that in wireless
networked control system the closed-loops are closed via wireless communication networks. The supplement
of the wireless network in the feedback control loop makes the analysis and design of systems more difficult

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Int J Rob & Autom ISSN: 2722-2586  145

than the conventional structural model. The wireless network control system can create undependable and
time delay-dependent stages of service in terms of, for example, time delays, jitter, or packet dropouts. The
quality of service (QoS) can improve the real-time wireless network control system performance, however,
the wireless network performance is still subject to frequency interference, bandwidth limitation, to
aggressive flows. It is also noteworthy that protocols providing the quality of service are not common in all
real-time networks [2].

Figure 1. Typical setup of wireless SM

2. MATHEMATICAL MODEL OF SM
The mathematical models are derived according to the following assumptions: Mutual inductances
are ignored, minimum variation of self-inductance with mechanical angle, fluxes are assumed to be
sinusoidal around mean value, neglected all torques values.

2.1. Electrical model

𝑖𝑎 = [𝑣𝑎 − 𝑅𝑖𝑎 + 𝑘𝑚 𝑤 sin(𝑁𝑟 𝜃)]/𝐿 (1)

𝑖𝑏 = [𝑣𝑏 − 𝑅𝑖𝑏 + 𝑘𝑚 𝑤 cos( 𝑁𝑟 𝜃)]/𝐿 (2)

where, 𝑖𝑎 and 𝑖𝑏 are armatures and phase current respectively, 𝑣𝑎 and 𝑣𝑏 are armature and phase voltage, 𝑁𝑟
is the number of teeth, 𝑅 is resistance, 𝑘𝑚 is motor torque, 𝑤 is angular speed of motor, and 𝐿 is inductance.

2.2. Mechanical model

1
𝑤̇ = [−𝑘𝑚 𝑖𝑎 𝑠𝑖𝑛(𝑁𝑟 𝜃) + 𝑘𝑚 𝑖𝑏 𝑐𝑜𝑠(𝑁𝑟 𝜃) − 𝐵𝑤 − 𝑇𝐿 − 𝑘𝐷 𝑠𝑖𝑛(4𝑁𝑟 𝜃)]
𝐽 (3)
𝜃̇ = 𝑤

where, J is motor moment of inertia, 𝐵 is friction viscous factor, 𝑇𝐿 is load torque, 𝑘𝐷 is drive torque, and 𝜃̇ is
motor position.
𝑣𝑎 𝑣𝑏
𝑢𝑟 = and 𝑢𝑏 = (4)
𝐿 𝐿

𝑥 𝑤̇
By defining 𝑥 = [ 1 ] = [ ̇ ] the control system can be written as follows.
𝑥2 𝜃

𝑥̇1 = 𝑥2 ⋯ ⋯ ⋯
𝑘𝑚 𝐿 𝑅𝑥2 (5)
𝑥̇ 2 = (𝑢𝑟 − 𝑢 )
𝑅𝐽 𝐿 𝑑

2.3. Robust controller design

A robust model reference controller proposed design to investigate two objectives in the presence of
uncertainty and without it. Firstly, system output tracks the decided reference value. Secondly, system to be
stable and all uncertain parameters with limit time.
To design such a controller, the following assumptions will be considered. Reference vector 𝜃𝑑 =
[𝜃𝑑 , 𝜃𝑑 ] is defined such that ‖𝜃̇𝑑 ‖ < 𝜃1 and ‖𝜃𝑑 ‖ < 𝜃0 ; where, 𝜃1 and 𝜃0 are known positive constants. Take
̇
in your account that we want to calculate the sign of system function in order to design the robust controller.
The sign of states must be constant over all domains, while 𝛼 is defined to determine the sign of system
Wireless stepper motor control and optimization based on robust control theory (Waleed Khalid Al-Azzawi)
146  ISSN: 2722-2586

function and its value is selected according to system requirement. Also, 𝑢𝑟 and 𝑢𝑑 are considered as the
system inputs and defined as follows.

𝑢𝑟 = 𝛼, 𝑢𝑑 = 𝛼𝑈 (6)

where, 𝑈 is control signal generated by control system.

3. SIMULATION RESULTS
In this section, we apply robust control design theory to state equation which obtained from section
2. Also, we compared the system performance when used traditional control and robust control in output
signal tracking control. For this purpose, we required to use system (5) in SM block of block-diagram which
has been shown in Figure 1. For the purpose of simulation, we use the following values for the system
parameters, obtained from [14]:
𝑠𝑒𝑐
𝑅 = 100 Ω, 𝐿 = 0.001 H, 𝐵 = 0.001 𝑁𝑚 𝑟𝑎𝑑 , 𝐽 = 57 × 10−7 𝐾𝑔𝑚2 , 𝑁𝑟 = 50, and
𝑘𝑚 = 114 × 10−3 𝑁𝑚 ⁄𝐴

It must be noted that all torques values has been neglected in (1). The purpose of control design is to
have the output of rotor position tracks the desirable path shown in Figure 2 with minimum error. To
demonstration the efficiency of proposed controller, in addition to certain model of the system, the
experiments have been implemented in the presence of uncertainty. The model reference error between the
wireless SM output and the robust model reference controller output is used as the error training signal. The
procedure is illustrated in Figure 3. Tracking performance for traditional and robust control system, under
certain model condition, is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 2. Desired motor input

Figure 3. Procedure of error learning algorithm

IAES Int J Rob & Autom, Vol. 10, No. 2, June 2021 : 144 – 148
Int J Rob & Autom ISSN: 2722-2586  147

It must be seen that traditional controller modelling is designed according to [16]. As well, model
factors are constant in both traditional and robust model reference control system during simulation process.
It is observed from Figure 4 that the proposed robust model reference controller reaches to the desirable
output faster than traditional controller. As shown in Figure 4, time constant of traditional controller and
proposed robust model reference controllers are 0.029 and 0.017, respectively. Furthermore, simulation
results with the existence of system factors uncertainty have been shown in Figure 5. It must be noted that
uncertainty has been applied to rotor, load inertia, and viscous friction coefficient of the SMs [3]. Similarly, a
random disturbance has been applied to load and viscous friction coefficient in scale of 58x10 -9 and 2x10-5,
respectively. In Figure 5, uncertainty is applied to load and viscous friction coefficient, respectively, and
tracking performance is compared for both traditional controller and robust model reference controllers. It is
observable that proposed robust model reference controller has better performance in tracking control signal
and also faster response rather than traditional controller. Also, proposed controller is more robust against
modifications and uncertain parameters of the system model.

Figure 4. Wireless SM response with robust controller without uncertain parameters

Figure 5. Wireless SM response with robust controller with uncertain parameters

4. CONCLUSION
Based on simulation results, it was detected that proposed robust model reference controller has
enhanced the tracking control signal and more robustness response in comparison with traditional controller
in the presence of both uncertainties. Actually, using of uncertain signals applied to system model and robust
controller methods to model nonlinear and indefinite functions, results in handling uncertainties much better
than the traditional controller. Thus, the effect of uncertainties removed or becomes minimum. Finally, it was
presented that robust controller provides high performance in presence of uncertain signal and the simulation
results demonstrated the main objective of the proposed controller that was accurate output position control.

Wireless stepper motor control and optimization based on robust control theory (Waleed Khalid Al-Azzawi)
148  ISSN: 2722-2586

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IAES Int J Rob & Autom, Vol. 10, No. 2, June 2021 : 144 – 148