Development of a New Controller Architecture with FPGA Based Integrated Circuit Design Technology for Improved Productivity Performance in Industrial Automation

Description

In this project, improved motion control hardware architecture is proposed for automation equipment. The main aim of the research is to remove the servo control loop from the DSP (Digital Signal Processor) and implement the high-speed servo loop in an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array). The research will start from partitioning existing control algorithms into a linear portion and a nonlinear portion. The linear portion with position/current feedback represents the major control loop and will be implemented in FPGA. The nonlinear portion acts as dynamic compensation to the linear portion to calculate model related control gains/parameters, and will be implemented in the DSP. In tandem with the newly developed control hardware architecture, a FPGA-based motion control Integrated Circuit (IC) will be developed. Experimental testing and verification will be conducted on a multi-axis CNC machine and an industrial robot manipulator to compare the closed-loop performance with this new control architecture and the traditional one, when the same control algorithm is used.