A motion-control chip to generate velocity profiles of desired characteristics

Abstract

A motion-control chip contains major functions that are necessary to control the position of each motor, such as generating velocity command profiles, reading motor positions, producing control signals, driving several types of servo amplifiers, and interfacing host processors. Existing motion-control chips can only generate velocity profiles of fixed characteristics, typically linear and s-shape smooth symmetric curves. But velocity profiles of these two characteristics are not optimal for all tasks in industrial robots and automation systems. Velocity profiles of other characteristics are preferred for some tasks. This paper proposes a motion-control chip to generate velocity profiles of desired acceleration and deceleration characteristics. The proposed motion-control chip is implemented with a field-programmable gate array by using the Very High-Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language and Handel-C. Experiments using velocity profiles of four different characteristics will be performed.