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Abstract A comprehensive artificial intelligence-based motor drive was developed to control the performance of a permanent magnet direct current (PMDC) motor employed as a small-scale three-bladed horizontal axis ocean current turbine. Although the conventional controller performs reasonably in a lab environment where non-linear load is absented; however, for towing tank experiments with noisy and potentially non-linear input, it is crucial to run the small-scale turbine in a robust mode. A mathematical model of a PMDC motor dynamic system is derived incorporating a fuzzy logic controller. In addition, this drive control was validated experimentally. The experimental design is discussed in detail. The system performance was tested experimentally over a wide range of operating condition to validate the fuzzy logic control robustness and effectiveness. Also, it is shown that the speed of the PMDC motor was controlled by using this fuzzy logic controller. The speed tracking shows good agreement with the reference speed regardless of the load condition.