15th Triennial World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control
  Barcelona, 21–26 July 2002 
APPLICATION OF SENSORLESS ELECTRIC DRIVE TO UNMANNED UNDERSEA VEHICLE PROPULSION
Todd D. Batzela, Daniel P. Thiviergeb, and Kwang Y. Leec
a Applied Research Laboratory, State College, PA 16804
b Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Newport, RI 02841
c The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16804

Sensorless electric drive is an enabling technology in the realization of submersible propulsion systems such as the integrated motor/propulsor (IMP). The IMP concept features an electric motor embedded within the shroud of an undersea vehicle’s propulsor. This arrangement provides many advantages over conventional propulsion systems but prevents the use of conventional rotor position sensors because of reliability issues in the harsh submerged environment. In this paper, a position sensorless drive is applied to the IMP and experimental results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique.
Keywords: Autonomous vehicles, electric vehicles, propulsion control, brushless motors, sensorless drives, motor control, observers, estimation, automatic control
Session slot T-Tu-M05: Underwater Vehicles/Area code 8c : Marine Systems