Positioning controller

Abstract

A positioning controller includes a gear mechanism having a rotating gear for positioning a movable member, a brushless motor to drive the rotating gear, and a motor control circuit to rotate a rotor of the brushless motor by sequentially supplying a driving pulse to a plurality of fixed coils of the brushless motor. The motor control circuit includes a present stage number detector to detect a present stage number of the movable member in accordance with an output signal from a magneto-sensitive device of the brushless motor, and a driving pulse generator to generate a driving pulse to rotate the rotor until a target stage number converted from a specified position of the movable member is equal to the present stage number. The controller in an apparatus including a motor driving unit allows positioning of the movable member without using a component for the detection of the position of the movable member.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.