Sensorless Control of DC Drive Using Artificial Neural Network

The paper deals with the application of an artificial neural network in the speed control of the DC drive without a speed sensor. The sensorless control structure of the DC drive contains the feedforward artificial neural network for speed estimation. The sensorless DC drive was simulated in program Matlab with Simulink toolbox. The main goal was to find the simplest artificial neural network structure with minimum number of neurons, but simultaneously good control characteristics are required. Despite the used neural network, which is very simple, it was achieved satisfactory results. The simulation results were confirmed by measurement of important quantities on a laboratory stand with the DC drive.