Force Sensorless Control Applied to a Power
Assisted Revolving Door
Wu-Sung Yao, Jiun-Yih Kuan, and Mi-Ching Tsai
Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University,
No 1, Ta-Hsueh Road, Tainan 701 Taiwan.
Abstract-- The human-robot interaction embraces wide
range of applications in various environments. A power
assisted system with force sensors enables a human being to
easily handle a heavy load. However, force sensors always
increase the cost and complication of the power assisted
system. In this paper, a power-assisted system applied to a
revolving door without force sensors is proposed. The
characteristics of the driving torque and human operation
are investigated. The proposed control system utilizes
Luenbergers observer and state feedback control to
stabilize the system and to optimize the response. The multi-
observers scheme that employs only a position sensor
(encoder) to estimate the load torques is implemented in
real-time. The proposed control system could reflect a
human operator's intentions and control the assisted
actuator to generate the required driving power. The
experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the
overall control algorithms.
Index Terms-- power assisted systemforce sensors
multi-observers schemestate feedback control
I. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, the human-robot interaction embraces
wide range of applications in various environments.
Many tools and devices operated with intuition and
forced by human to respond to do what they want. These
dynamic responses include acceleration, velocity,
displacement and disturbance of the device. In contrast to
operating these devices through the mechanical or
electrical interface, operating these directly is much more
convenient and easier. A power assisted system with
force sensors enables a human to easily handle a heavy
load, where a suitable assisted force is often given by an
actuator. Thus, this system not only makes the operator to
feel more convenient, but also reduces the required force
during the operation. In addition, in order to provide
different dynamic responses, this system could be
adjusted to match operating environment, where more
torque sensors are employed in the power-assisted system.
These sensors not only increase the complication of the
power assisted system, but also are not reliable to change
in the temperature. In the recent years, many researches
investigated how to design a torque observer with the
encoder information only [1][2]. However, the technical
literatures lack the general and complete methods with
state feedback control and the concept of the power
assistance.
The authors are grateful to the National Science Council of the
Republic of China for supporting this research under grant NSC 94-
2815-C-006 -064 E.
This paper proposes a power-assisted system applied
to a revolving door without force sensors. The
characteristics of the driving torque and human operation
are investigated. The proposed control system utilizes
Luenbergers observer and state feedback control to
stabilize the system and to optimize the response. The
multi-observers scheme, which employs only a position
sensor to estimate the load torques, is implemented in
real-time. The proposed control system can reflect a
human operator's intentions and control the assisted
actuator to generate the required driving power. Finally,
the experimental results are presented to demonstrate the
effectiveness of the overall control algorithms.
II. SYSTEM DYNAMICS AND LOAD TORQUE OBSERVERS
For the power-assisted systems, the most important
technique is how to estimate the load torques by encoders.
In this paper, the human operator's intentions and the
characteristics of the driving torque are investigated to
generate the required driving power. For the revolving
doors system, inertia forces and frictional forces cause the
main resistive forces where inertia forces are proportional
to the angular acceleration, and frictional forces are
proportional to angular velocity. Therefore, by the
estimated velocities and accelerations, one can easily
handle a heavy load with suitable power-assisted
strategies. Many researches proposed the approach of
using torque observer design with encoder information to
a servo control system. The conventional load torque
observer [3] shown in Fig. 1 is often employed to reduce
the speed ripple caused by the variation of the load torque
with a low-pass filter.
Fig. 1. The torque observer with a first-order filter.
A modified load torque observer was proposed [4],
which utilizes the inverse dynamic model and the concept
of time delay to design a high order low-pass filter, i.e., Q
filter as shown in Fig. 2. However, if the accuracy of a
virtual system is not fixed, the errors are easily
accumulated. Moreover, the high-order filter in the 1
control system has a serious phase-lag problem . iK vo Tmotor
s

1 1 1
K vo J s
s

1
bvo J

1 iK ao Tmotor
s
1
1 1
K ao J s s
C
bao

Fig. 2. The torque observer with Q filter.

Fig. 4. The load torque observer with the dual scheme.

In Fig. 3, Wu [5] developed a load torque observer,

which combines the LAE and the command feedforward,
utilizes closed loop control to compensate the
acceleration. However, the phase lag is also found with
the LAE scheme. Schimdt and Lorenz [6] exploited a
dual scheme including velocity and acceleration
observers as shown in Fig. 4. The major feature of this
dual scheme is without any numerical differentiation and
the velocity and acceleration observers can be adjusted
individually. The estimated velocity in the velocity
observer can be utilized in the acceleration observer to
estimate acceleration of the control system. However the
Fig. 5. The proposed Luenberger observer.
technical literatures lack the general and complete
methods with state feedback control and the concept of The proposed multi-observer system is illustrated in
the power assistance. In this paper, the control system Fig. 6, which combines a dual scheme of velocity and
utilizes the Luenberger observer and state feedback acceleration observers, the Luenberger observer with
control, as shown in Fig. 5, to stabilize the system and to predictor-corrector. Seven designed parameters are given
optimize the response. With only an encoder, the multi- in the multi-observers scheme to make the power-
observers scheme is implemented in real-time to assisted system more flexible. To design these parameters
estimate the load torques. of this multi-observers scheme, the system is divided
into three parts, i.e., velocity observer, acceleration
observer, and load torque observer. By utilizing the third-
order Butterworth filter, the designed parameters can be
simplified as two designed parameters.

1 iK vo Tmotor
s

1 1 1
K vo
J s s

Fig. 3. The torque observer with the LAE and commend feedforward. bvo 1
J

1 iK ao
s
Tmotor
1
1 1
K ao
J s s

bao

T load 1
B
1+ p s

Fig. 6. The proposed multi-observer system.

III. THE CONTROL STRATEGIES
In general, the control strategies of the traditional
power-assisted systems often depend on the measured
force by a force sensor. It reflects the operator's intentions
to generate the required driving power with a assisted
actuator, where the system dynamics can be described by
a second order ordinary differential equation, i.e.,
Jx + C x + K x = f ( t ) + f p ( t ) (1)
where x , J , C , and K are the displacement, inertia,
viscous friction coefficient, and stiffness respectively.
f ( t ) and f p ( t ) are denoted as the external force and the
assisted force imposed to the system respectively. In the
following, two kinds of the assisted forces are given to
show the performances of the power-assisted system.
First, the assisted force is expressed as
f p ( x, x, x ) = J x + C x + K x (2)
Following from (1) and (2), the dynamics equation of the
power-assisted system becomes
(J J ) x+(CC ) x+(KK ) x = f ( t) (3)
Fig. 7. The complete controlled scheme for the power-assisted revolving
Equation (3) illustrates that the control state of the door.
original system is reduced by a subtraction with the
assisted force feedback.
Second, assume that the assisted force f p is a function of
the external force, that is
f p = K a f (t ) (4)
where K a is defined as a assisted ratio. Then the system
characteristic is given as
J C K
x+ x+ x = f (t ) (5)
1 + Ka 1+ Ka 1+ Ka
(a) (b)
Observing Equation (5), the control state of the original Fig. 8. The acceleration responses of the power assisted system with the
system is proportional to the assisted ratio K a . differential assisted ratio (a) K a = 0.5 and (b) K a = 1 .
Equations (3) and (5) reveal that the assisted force can
be regarded as a control state which is used to improve IV. EXPERIMENT RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
the dynamic characteristic of the system. However, only Experiments are carried out with the proposed power-
using Equations (3) or (5), the control system will easily assisted strategy and multi-observers scheme, where the
become unstable with the assisted force feedback. Thus, control algorithm is implemented by a DSP motion
the useful assisted force combining the assisted strategies control card PMC32-600/6000. Figure 9 shows a minified
of Equations (3) and (5) is represented by revolving door, which is used to demonstrate the real
f p = K a ( x , x , x ) f (t ) (6) performs of this power assisted system, with a Panasonic
Therefore, the proposed power-assisted system is AC servo motor and a driver. Table 1 gives the
depicted by Fig. 7, which includes of the power-assisted corresponding specifications of the motor.
strategy (5) and multi-observers scheme (Fig. 6). In
order to demonstrate the effectiveness and stability of this
proposed power-assisted system, computer simulations
are carried out with the different assisted ratios K a . The
designed bandwidths of the velocity observer, the
acceleration observer, and low-pass filter are 15 rad/sec,
50 rad/sec, and 50 rad/sec, respectively. Figure 8 shows
the simulated results with the differential assisted ratio,
i.e, K a = 0.5 and K a = 1 . Under the low frequency load
torque, the proportion of the acceleration approaches the
designed assisted ratio. Due to the designed bandwidth of
the observer, the proportion of the acceleration is smaller
than the assisted ratio with the high frequency load torque.
Fig. 9. A minified revolving door.
 TABLE 1
THE SPECIFICATIONS OF A PANASONIC SERVO MOTOR

Specification of motor Specification

Rated Output 1.0 kW

Rated Speed 2000 r/min

Max. Speed 3000 r/min

(a) (b)
Rated Torque 4.8 N.m Fig. 12. The acceleration responses of the power assisted system with
the differential assisted ratio (a) K a = 0.25 and (b) K a = 0.5 .
Max. Torque 14.4 N.m

Rotor inertia 2610 kg^-4.m^2 V. CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, a power-assisted system applied to a
Weight 8.9 kg
revolving door without force sensors has been proposed.
The characteristics of the driving torque and human
A. Load torque observing operation were investigated. The proposed control system
utilizes Luenbergers observer and state feedback control
Figure 11 shows that the responses of the torque
to stabilize the system and to optimize the response. The
observing are less phase lag and the magnitudes of the
multi-observers scheme that employs only a position
estimated torques are close to the commands. However,
sensor to estimate the load torques was implemented in
due to the effect of the Gibbs phenomena, the estimated
real-time. The proposed control system could reflect a
errors are found in zero load torque command. With the
human operator's intentions and control the assisted
nonlinear viscous force, the unwanted estimated torque is
actuator to generate the required driving power. The
small comparing to the real load torque of a human
experimental results demonstrated the effectiveness of the
beings operation.
overall control algorithms.

(a) (b)
Fig. 11. The responses of the torque observing with the differential
commands (a)1.5 Nm and (b)2.0 Nm.
B. System with power assisted and without power
assisted
Figure 12 shows the results with the differential
assisted ratio, i.e, K a = 0.25 and K a = 0.5 . Under the
low frequency load torque, the proportion of the
acceleration is close to the designed assisted ratio. Due to
the designed bandwidth of the observer, the proportion of
the acceleration is smaller than the assisted ratio with the
high frequency load torque.
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