Sensorless Control of a Planetary Motor

This paper presents the sensorless control capabilities of a Planetary Motor, a novel Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machine (PMSM) design introduced in 2017. Although the Planetary Motor is a multi-rotor machine, it electrically acts like a single-rotor machine. This can be utilized to apply sensorless control algorithms like the INFORM and Back-EMF method to provide the rotor angle information for field-oriented control in the entire speed range including standstill. Measurements of both sensorless methods are presented and as the evaluation shows, these methods are applicable to the Planetary Motor.