Jan-Henri Montonen

My research concentrates on the intelligent control of a mechanical system powered by an electric drive. The mechanical system can be, for example, a hybrid vehicle or an electric crane. Common to these systems is that they consist of mechanical structures, electrical drives, gears, hydraulics, sensors, and embedded systems. The dynamic response of this system consists of the sum of the subsystems. This makes system analysis difficult when using methods of control engineering.
Additionally, these systems contain un-linearity, which is caused, for example, by mechanical clearances and anti-windup –properties of integrating controllers. In addition, environmental disturbances (wind, terrain, load) add challenges for control design. The control algorithm is executed in an embedded environment, which normally has more limited resources than a modern computer. As a result the designed control algorithms need to be light in terms of calculation.
The aim of the research is to model electrically driven mechanical systems and to develop intelligent control for such systems. The control program is executed in the inverter and the program utilizes the rotational speed and torque estimates of the motor calculated by the inverter. This decreases the need for external sensors.