Identification and adaptive neural network control of a DC motor system with dead-zone characteristics

In this paper, an adaptive control approach based on the neural networks is presented to control a DC motor system with dead-zone characteristics (DZC), where two neural networks are proposed to formulate the traditional identification and control approaches. First, a Wiener-type neural network (WNN) is proposed to identify the motor DZC, which formulates the Wiener model with a linear dynamic block in cascade with a nonlinear static gain. Second, a feedforward neural network is proposed to formulate the traditional PID controller, termed as PID-type neural network (PIDNN), which is then used to control and compensate for the DZC. In this way, the DC motor system with DZC is identified by the WNN identifier, which provides model information to the PIDNN controller in order to make it adaptive. Back-propagation algorithms are used to train both neural networks. Also, stability and convergence analysis are conducted using the Lyapunov theorem. Finally, experiments on the DC motor system demonstrated accurate identification and good compensation for dead-zone with improved control performance over the conventional PID control.