Motor controller

A method for controlling drive motors mounted within one or more aircraft wheels to drive an aircraft independently on the ground in a selected forward or reverse direction or from a stationary state without the use of the aircraft main engines in accordance with one or more selected operational states comprising:

• (a) providing an electrically powered high phase order drive motor mounted within one or more aircraft wheels comprising a stator-rotor combination configured to generate a requested wheel torque or speed in response to a selected operational state to drive said one or more aircraft wheels, and providing drive electronics electronically connected to said stator-rotor combination;
• (b) providing a pilot interface operationally connected to said drive motor comprising a plurality of input devices and a plurality of notification devices designed to overlap with said input devices, and configuring each of said input devices to actuate a power command to generate the requested wheel torque or speed to drive the at least one aircraft wheel and move the aircraft in accordance with a selected operational state when a pilot of said aircraft activates an input device;
• (c) providing sensors adapted to provide information relating to said selected operational state, and measuring and storing selected parameters relating to operation of said electrically powered high phase order drive motor when a pilot of said aircraft activates an input device to move the aircraft in accordance with a selected operational state;
• (d) providing hardware drivers electronically connected to said input devices and said sensors, and calibrating power commands to move the aircraft in accordance with a selected operational state from information received from said sensors and measured and stored selected parameters;
• (e) providing a control loop electronically connecting said hardware drivers, said sensors, said input devices, and said drive motor comprising system state change laws and means for applying the state change laws to determine a current aircraft wheel operational state, first parameter filter limit law (PFLL) means for filtering input device variables according to a first set of out-of-bounds conditions, first calculation means to determine a wheel torque or speed request to apply to the drive motor in accordance with filtered input device variables, second parameter filter limit law (PFLL) means for filtering a determined torque or speed request, second calculation means to determine a motor drive frequency and motor voltage to produce the filtered wheel torque or speed request, motor command generator means for producing lower level commands to drive the drive motor based on determined motor drive frequency and motor voltage, and motor commander means for formatting said lower level commands for said drive motor;
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• (f) activating an input device to actuate a power command to generate the requested wheel torque or speed based on information provided by the sensors and measured and stored parameters, thereby actuating the control loop to determine a torque or speed request for an operational state, filtering the torque or speed request according to parameter filter limit laws to produce a filtered torque or speed request, determining a motor drive frequency and motor voltage required to produce the filtered torque or speed request, and commanding a supply of electric power to the drive motor according to the determined motor drive frequency and motor voltage to drive said one or more aircraft wheels at a torque or speed requested to move the aircraft in accordance with the selected operational state.