International Journal of Automation and Computing 1 (2006) 84-90

Observer-Based Nonlinear Control of A Torque Motor

with Perturbation Estimation
J Chen, E Prempain, Q H Wu
Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, The University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GJ, UK

Abstract: This paper presents an observer-based nonlinear control method that was developed and implemented to provide
accurate tracking control of a limited angle torque motor following a 50Hz reference waveform. The method is based on
a robust nonlinear observer, which is used to estimate system states and perturbations and then employ input-output
feedback linearization to compensate for the system nonlinearities and uncertainties. The estimation of system states and
perturbations allows input-output linearization of the nonlinear system without an accurate mathematical model of nominal
plant. The simulation results show that the observer-based nonlinear control method is superior in comparison with the
conventional model-based state feedback linearizing controller.
Keywords: Torque motor, nonlinear observer, fictitious state, perturbation estimation.

Introduction

The limited angle torque motor is an electromagnetic rotary actuator based on Laws relay principle[1] .
Since it has a low inertia moving-iron rotor that can
rotate up to a maximum of 15 , it is extremely fastacting and capable of generating high instantaneous acceleration. Theoretically, the magnitude and direction
of rotor deflection is directly related to the magnitude
and the excitation current in the stator winding, and
due to its magnetic stiffness it will return to the equilibrium point if the current is removed. In a recent
thermal imaging application, the rotation required was
from 10 to +10 in 16 ms, with a flyback period
of 4ms. To obtain highly accurate performance, it is
necessary to use precise and reliable tracking control.
The traditional control scheme[2] uses a multicompensator, multi-loop linear controller, to reshape
substantially motor response characteristics, with a
non-linear adaptive gain-scheduled controller to compensate for the nonlinear variations of the motor parameters.
The output feedback linearization[3] has been
widely used in the speed and position control of the
DC servo motors. This technique is based on feedback
linearization which algebraically transforms nonlinear
system dynamics into a (fully or partially) linear one
by an exact cancellation of the system nonlinearities.
By doing so, linear control techniques can be applied.
However, one of the major drawback of this method is

Manuscript received August 26, 2004; revised July 9, 2005.

Corresponding

author. E-mail address: q.h.wu@liverpool.ac.uk

that the implementation of the feedback linearization requires an accurate system model and system
parameters[4], without full knowledge of the system
nonlinearities and uncertainties, the cancellation is no
longer applicable. Furthermore, the system uncertainties and disturbance would have a great impact on the
whole control process and performance of the control
would degrade dramatically. However, it is unrealistic to assume the availability of perfect knowledge of
system nonlinearities or exact mathematical models.
On the state feedback linearization control of nonlinear system, the complete accessibility of the states
is a commonly invoked assumption. Nevertheless, the
states are not directly available or measured economically in practice. Therefore, they must be estimated
from output measurements using an adequate observer.
The design of an observer for nonlinear systems has
not been developed systematically as it is for linear
systems. The early nonlinear observer design can be
found in [5,6]. Bestle and Zeitz[7] transform nonlinear plant into an observable canonical form from which
the observer design is perform. In [8], Kahlil presents
the high gain observer, which can estimate robustly
the state and the derivatives of the output, has been
an important technique for the design of output feedback control of nonlinear systems. However, of all these
techniques, the detailed system parameters are still required for the observer designs.
The system perturbation is defined as the combined
effect of all the uncertainties and external disturbances.
Control of uncertain nonlinear systems with perturbation estimation has been used to improve the robustness of input-output linearization, such researches can

J Chen et al./Observer-Based Nonlinear Control of A Torque Motor with Perturbation Estimation

be found in [911], the perturbation is estimated by

the derivative of the state and control input. The original idea of perturbation estimation comes from time
delay control[9] , in which time delay values of derivatives of state variables and control inputs are used to
cancel the unknown nonlinear dynamics and uncertainties. The sliding mode and high gain observers have
been applied for estimation of system state and generalized perturbation, resulting in a nonlinear adaptive
control strategy[12,13], and applications for coordinated
control of large-scale systems[14] .
This paper presents a robust observer-based controller for high precision control of limited angle torque
motor. A nonlinear observer[15] has been designed to
perform the real time estimation of system state, nonlinearities and uncertainties. It is a function estimation rather than the parameter estimation used in the
other nonlinear adaptive control. A simple feedback
linearization control law is obtained as the system nonlinearities is included in the perturbation, and accurate
system model is not required for the controller.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 introduces a mathematical model for a limitedangle torque motor. Section 3 briefly reviews feedback
linearizing control design, which is presented to explain
the background of the nonlinear observer-based control
design and provide a comparison with it. Section 4 discusses the nonlinear and controller design for a limitedangle torque motor. Simulation results are shown in
Section 5 and conclusions are given in Section 6.

Torque motor model

The linear model of the limited angle torque motor can be characterized by three interconnected differential equations, which represent the dynamics of the
system, for both armature and rotor, and a set of mechanical dynamic, as follows

di R
b
1
L K
0
i
dt
L
L

d
= Kt Kf Ks + 0 u. (1)

dt
J
J
J

0
d
0
1
0
dt
The quantities of i, and represent the armature
current, rotor speed and rotor angle respectively; The
terms R, L denote the resistance and inductance of the
field winding, and Kf , Kb , Kf and Ks are the torque
constant, back emf constant, frictional constant, and
inertia stiffness respectively. J is the inertia of the rotor and u is the input voltage.
Theoretically, the magnitude and direction of the
rotor deflection are proportional to the magnitude and
direction of the excitation current i in the stator winding. However, due to magnetic stiffness, the rotor re-

85

turns to the equilibrium point when the current becomes steady, thus, magnetic stiffness Ks exhibits a
nonlinear static characteristic. This static characteristic may be determined experimentally by measuring
the relationship between the input voltage, motor current, static stiffness torque and output shaft position.
To do this an experimental procedure can be found
in [16]. An approximate mathematical expression was
sought to include nonlinearities in the dynamic model.
The best fit of curve was found to have the form:
Ks = (

a + b2
)
1 + c2

(2)

while 6 |15|, see the appendix for the values of a, b

and c. Clearly, the mathematical model of the motor is
nonlinear since magnetic stiffness is a nonlinear function of output position .

Input-output Feedback linearization

Here we briefly review input-output linearization

and its application in the control of the nonlinear
torque motor.
Let us consider a nominal model described by the
state-space representation:
x = f (x) + g(x)u, y = h(x)

(3)

where x R, u, y R, f : Rn Rn is the smooth

vector field. h : Rn Rn is a scalar output function. System (1) can be transformed into a normal
form through a nonlinear change of coordinate[3]
( T , T )T = (h(x), Lf h(x), . . . , Lr1
h(x),
f
1 (x), . . . , nr (x))T

(4)

satisfying
Lg i (x) = 0, i = 1, 2, . . . , n r,

(5)

with 0 < r 6 n is the nominal system relative degree.

The notation Lif h(x), i > 1, represents the Lie derivative of the scalar function h(x) with respect to the field
f (x). The original system is transformed as:
= i+1 , i = 1, . . . , r 1
r = Lr h(x) + Lg Lr1 h(x)u
f

= q(, )
y = 1 .

(6)

The (n r) dimensional subsystem given by:

= q(, )

(7)

is completely unobservable and can therefore be regarded as the internal dynamics of the subsystem. If

86

International Journal of Automation and Computing 1 (2006) 84-90

the dynamics is locally stable, the exact linearization

can be achieved by choosing the control law
u=

Lrf h(x) + v
Lg Lr1
h(x)
f

1
[a(x) + v]
b(x)

x2

x3 ]T = [

i]T

(9)

where denotes the position of the rotor, denotes

the speed of the rotor and i denotes the stator current.
State equation (1) can be rewritten as:

x2
0
Kf
Ks (x1 )
K
x
x = Jt x3 J x2
+
0 u
1

J
1
K
R
b
L x3 L x2
L
y = h(x) = x1 .
(10)
Then using the Lie derivative technique for this system,
we get
Lg h(x) = 0
Lf h(x) = x2
Lg Lf h(x) = 0
Kt
Kf
Ks (x1 )
L2f h(x) =
x3
x2
x1
J
J
J
Kt
Lg L2f h(x) =
.
JL

(15)

e = yd y = yd x1 , ki > 0
where, yd is the desired trajectory of the reference position.
Remark 1. If the relative degree of plant r is less
than n, the zero dynamics of the system are asymptotically stable. As in (6), equation (7) is asymptotically
stable, namely (6) is a minimum-phase system.
Remark 2. It should be noted that the inputoutput linearization method is implemented on the assumption that the system dynamics and parameters are
fully known and accurate. However, normally it is not
the case in most of the real applications.

4 Nonlinear extended state observer

and state feedback control
Considering the presence of the system uncertainties and disturbance in the control process, system can
be put in a more generic and realistic form as:

y = h(x)

f (x) = L3f h(x) = (

(12)

where:
3bcx41 bcx31 + acx21 acx1 + a
K s =
1 + 2cx21 + c2 x41

u=

x = f (x, t) + g(x)u + w(x, t)

As Lg L2f h(x) 6= 0, system (1) has relative degree r = 3.

The 3rd-order derivative of y with respect to time is
obtained as:
d3 y
= f (x) + bu
(11)
d3 t
with:
Kf Ks
K s
+
)x1
2
J
J
Kf2
Kt kb
Ks
Kt R Kt Kf
(
+
2 )x2 (
+
)x3
J
JL
JL
J
J2

v f (x)
b
v = k1 e + k2 e + k3 e

(8)

with Lg Lr1
h(x) 6= 0 in an open neighbourhood U (xs )
f
and v being external input.
In the case of torque motor control, by defining the
state variables as:
[x1

An input-output linearization control can be designed

as follows:

(16)

where the vector w(x, t) are unknown uniformly

bounded disturbances with respect to the time and
f (x, t) is a nonlinear time-varying function that represents the true system dynamics. Due to the uncertain
dynamics of the plant, it is risky to use an input-output
linearization technique to cancel system nonlinearities.
Instead of following the traditional path of modelling and linearization, we seek to actively compensate for the system nonlinearities and disturbances in
time domain, this is achieved by estimating the system
states and perturbations which includes nonlinearities
and uncertainties of the system. A brief introduction
of this method is given below.

4.1

Nonlinear extended state observer

(13)

Kt . Then the system model can be put in the

and b = JL
following form:

x 1 = x2
x 2 = x3
.
(14)

x 3 = f (x) + bu

In order to estimate system perturbation without

knowing its analytical form, consider transforming system (16) into canonical form as:
i = i+1 , i = 1, 2, . . . , r 1
r = Lrf h(x) + Lg Lr1
h(x)u + Lw Lr1
h(x)
f
f
= a() + c() + bu

J Chen et al./Observer-Based Nonlinear Control of A Torque Motor with Perturbation Estimation

= q(, )

(17)

where r denotes the relative degree of the system. Here

we suppose that the term b = Lg Lr1
h(x) is indepenf
dent of . The zero dynamics are assumed to be exponentially stable and the disturbance appears only in
the control input space, that is, for x U :
Lw Lfi1 h(x) = 0, i = 1, . . . , r 1

(18)

and Lw Lr1
h(x) 6= 0. Define the system perturbaf
tion term (, , t) = a(, ) + c(, ), then the second
equation of (17) can be rewritten as
r = (, , t) + bu

(19)

the () is assumed to be locally Lipschitz. Introducing

a fictitious state r+1 = (, , t) to represent the system perturbation, results in an augmented plant model:

switching terms and make the output of the observer

smoother.

4.2

Observer-based controller design

With the proper selection of observer parameters,

the estimation of the system states and the perturbation will converge to their real values quickly as
z1 x1 , , zr+1 (, , t). With the estimation of the states and perturbation, a controller can be
designed:
u = v zr+1 /b0
(23)
then the exact cancellation of the system perturbations
is achieved, regardless of actual dynamics of nonlinearities and disturbances, the system model reduces to a
linear model with a n integrator chain where v is the
control input, defined as:

i = i+1 , i = 1, 2, . . . , r 1
r = (, , t) + bu

v=

r
X

kj zj .

(24)

j=1

r+1 = (, , t)
= q(, )
y = 1 .

87

(20)

By doing this, the time varying nonlinearities and

disturbance can be incorporated into a new state set
of the plant model. The following nonlinear observer
is used to estimate the states of the extended system
model:

zi = zi+1 i g(z1 , 1 , ), i = 1, . . . , r 1

zr = zr+1 r g(z1 , r , ) + bu

zr+1 = r+1 g(z1 , r+1 , )

(21)
where the i , . . . , r , r+1 are the observer gains, and
z1 1 is the estimation error of the measurable state.
The nonlinear function g(x) is defined as:

|x| sign(x), |x| >
g(x, , ) =
.
(22)
x/ 1 ,
|x| 6
Remark 3. The nonlinear function in (20) is used
to make the observer more efficient. It was selected
heuristically based on experimental results. Intuitively,
it is a nonlinear gain function where small errors correspond to higher gain, this is actually the characteristic
of some fuzzy logic and gain scheduling controllers.
Remark 4. If the coefficient i is chosen as unity,
then the observer (21) is equivalent to the well known
Luenburger Observer.
Remark 5. Note that there is a linear segment
in (22) in the neighbourhood of the origin. The purpose is to prevent high frequency chattering caused by

Here the coefficient kj is linear feedback controller gain.

Compared to the conventional linearization method,
the observer-based linearization does not require the
functional form of the uncertain dynamics.

5 Observer-based linearized controller

for torque motor
Define the motor system state variables as:
[x1

x2

x3 ]T = [ 0

i]T

(25)

where 0 is the positional reference and 0 is the reference rotor speed. Introducing a fictitious state x4
equivalent to the system perturbation, following the
procedure (9)(14) and (19) (20), the state equation
of system (16) can be rewritten in the form of a 4thorder extended state equation:

x = x2

x = x
2
3
(26)

x 3 = x4 + bu

x 4 = h(t)

Kt and h(t) is the derivative of the system

where b = JL
perturbation which is unknown. The reason for augmenting the order of the plant is to place the perturbation term in the state space such that a state observer
can be used to estimate it, one such observer is given
by:

z1 = z2 1 g(z1 x1 , 1 , )

z = z g(z x , , )
2
3
2
1
1
2
(27)

z3 = z4 3 g(z1 x1 , 3 , ) + bu

z4 = 4 g(z1 x1 , 4 , )

88

International Journal of Automation and Computing 1 (2006) 84-90

The nonlinear function g(x) is defined as in (22). With

the estimation of system state and perturbations, the
control law can be designed as follows:
u = v z4 /b0
v = k1 z1 k2 z2 k3 z3 .

(28)

Note that the state variable defined in (25) realizes

tracking error between the reference signal and output
signal, thus, the full state feedback controller is actually
a error state feed-back controller. Also, the derivatives
of the error is obtained without taking the direct differentiation of the reference signal and output signal,
this makes the algorithm less sensitive to the noise.

and k3 = 0.0032. Fig.2 is the positional response of the

observer-based method. Fig.3 is the tracking error.
In this specific application, it can be observed that
both of these control methods exhibit fast-acting tracking abilities. However, note that input-output linearization use full states and know parameters of the
simulation system, nevertheless the robust observerbased method employs only the output position signal and control input, without knowing parameter and
exact system nonlinearities.

Simulation study

The proposed control method is evaluated through

a simulation study in which the parameters of the
torque motor are listed in Appendix. To assess system performance, a 50Hz sawtooth waveform is applied as reference position signal, the objective of control is to track this signal accurately according to the
performance requirement of the torque motor.

6.1
6.1.1

Control performance evaluation

Fig.2 The positional response of the

observer-based method

Input-output linearization

In order to achieve fast tracking performance, the

feedback gains were chosen as k1 = 1000, k2 = 2 105
and k3 = 1000 to guarantee the fast tracking. Fig.1 is
the positional response of the input-output linearization control.

Fig.3 Tracking error of the observer-based method

6.2

Fig.1 Positional response of the Input-output linearization

6.1.2

Observer-based robust control

The observer gains are chosen as 1 = 2 104, 2 =

2 106 , 3 = 2 109 and 4 = 2 107 . The feedback
gains of the controller are chosen as k1 = 150, k2 = 32.6

Robustness to the disturbance

In order to compare the robustness of these two

methods, a step load torque disturbance is applied at
the time T = 0.03s to the rotor. Fig.4 is the disturbance response of input-output linearization method
while Fig.5 is the disturbance response to the robust
observer-based nonlinear controller.
From Fig.4, we can see the tracking ability of inputoutput linearization has degraded greatly in this case,

J Chen et al./Observer-Based Nonlinear Control of A Torque Motor with Perturbation Estimation

the unity disturbance has caused the control system

to lose its tracking ability. However, in the case of
observer-based method, since the unknown input of the
whole control system will be compensated in real-time,
it can maintain same quality of performance with oscillations around the disturbance point.

89

ics and disturbance are estimated as a state of the

plant model and they are compensated in real-time.
This control system has a simple structure which can
easily be implemented in practice with single measurement. The simulation results show that in the control
of the limited angle torque motor, the performance of
the observer-based method is better than the inputoutput linearization.

Appendix
The design parameters for the limited angle torque
motor are as follows:
Parameter
Torque constant (Kt )
Back-EMF constant (Kb )
Frictional coefficient (Kf )
Winding resistance (R)
Winding inductance (L)
Rotor inertia (J)
Magnetic stiffness(Ks )

Fig.4 Positional response of input-output linearization

with load torque disturbance

Fig.5 Positional response of observer-based method with

load torque disturbance

Conclusions

A novel robust observer based nonlinear controller

has been proposed for the control of limited angle
torque motor. By introducing a fictitious state, an
extended state observer can be used to estimate the
system state and perturbation. The controller possesses robustness to deal with the system and parameter uncertainties, such that it does not require any
explicit mathematical model of the motor system. Furthermore, the nonlinear control system actively rejects
external disturbance, as the system nonlinear dynam-

Value
0.125N m/A
0.125V /rad s1
104 N m/rad s1
16
0.045H
3 107 kg m2
a = 0.034 b = 7.4 c = 5.7

References
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[13] Q. H. Wu, L. Jiang, J.Y. Wen. Decentralised adaptive control of interconnected nonlinear systems using high gain observer. International Journal of Control, vol. 77, no. 8, pp.
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Jian-Chi Chen received his B.Sc.
degree in Electrical and Electronic
Engineering from Wuhan University,
China, in 2001. He is currently an
M.Phil. research student in Department of Electrical Engineering and
Electronics, The University of Liverpool. His research interests include
nonlinear control, robust control and
their applications in electric power systems.
Emmanuel Prempain obtain a PhD
from the University of Bordeaux in
November 1995.
After completing
the PhD study, he worked in Bordeaux and worked for the Dynamics and Automatic Department of the
French National Space Centre (CNES)
of Toulouse, France on an Active Suspension System. In 1997, he joined the
Control Group, the Department of Engineering at the University of Leices-

ter, as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working on Simultaneous

Stabilisation and Static Output feedback Synthesis. In September 2002 he was appointed Lectureship in Control Engineering
and joined the Intelligence Engineering and Automation Group,
the Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, The
University of Liverpool. His research interests include H-infinity
and Robust Control Methods, Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMIs),
Flight Control Systems (Helicopter Control, Missile Control) and
Induction Machines Control.
Qing-Hua Wu obtained an M.Sc.
(Eng) degree in Electrical Engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), China,
in 1981. From 1981 to 1984, he was
appointed Lecturer in Electrical Engineering in the University. He obtained
a Ph.D. degree from The Queens University of Belfast (QUB), U.K., in
1987. He worked as a Research Fellow
and Senior Research Fellow in QUB from 1987 to 1991 and Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, Loughborough University,
U.K. from 1991 to 1995. Since 1995 he has held the Chair of
Electrical Engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, The University of Liverpool, U.K., acting
as the Head of Intelligence Engineering and Automation group.
Professor Wu is a Chartered Engineer, Fellow of IEE and Senior
Member of IEEE. His research interests include nonlinear adaptive control, mathematical morphology, neural networks, learning systems, pattern recognition, evolutionary computation and
power system control and operation.