Redundant drive control by observers

An increasing level of automation (intelligence) of technical processes automatically implies an increasing number of electric propulsion drives (muscles). These drives provide the necessary motion and dynamics in production plants as well as within the products itself. Because the failure of one single electric drive can possibly lead to a breakdown of the total production process causing relevant losses of production and/or give rise to dangerous situations an increasing demand exists for electric propulsion drives with high operational safety. This can only be guaranteed by redundant data acquisition and processing because in the case of a damaged component (e.g. sensors) its function will be taken over by another component without affecting the total function of the system. The author shows that this is not only possible in process plants with high investment costs but also in the so-called low-cost automation