Embedded.com Tech Focus Newsletter (2-3-14)

The combination of low power, smaller size, and lower cost is requiring developers of motor control designs in consumer, home, industrial and automotive apps to move to exotic solutions such as MEMS, forcing re-evaluation of the fuzzy logic and PID algorithms now used.

Software techniques for adding more features and higher complexity to a motor control design without increasing cost or requiring added components.

Two popular approaches to high level embedded design, model-based development using Simulink and model based design using UML/SysML can be used effectively in a wide range of robotic and machine control systems.

This article details a simple algorithm utilizing conventional microcontroller blocks to control commercially available H-bridges to properly commutate a bipolar stepper motor through a microstepping profile.

Michael Parker of Altera Corp. describes how to use an ARM/FPGA-based SoC for real-time machine control algorithm operations. He also describes how the SoC can function as a network processor to link up to the real-time network protocols used in many industrial automation applications.

ST Micro’s Tom Hopkins describes how the L6470 programmable state machine based L6470 simplifies the implementation of multiple motor controls by integrating a digital control core with the driver IC to manage user-defined movement profiles with minimal loading on the main microcontroller.

This article provides a brief overview of the ITAE [Integral of the time weighted absolute error] method for PI tuning, describing a stepwise method to be followed for a variety of field-oriented motor-control apps.

How to use AMI Semiconductor's ASSP ICs to achieve the right level of stepper motor controller/driver integration.

Here is how to use the peripheral-rich eCOG1Xin embedded motor control apps to host a number of motor control specific peripherals to aid in executing the the application on the microcontroller processor core.

The basics of motor controller design with programmable SoC vs. dedicated MCU.

After a brief introduction to the basics, this article compares DSPs, MCUs and mixed signal FPGAs in building efficient AC motor control systems with a minimum of power consumption.

The authors describe how they implemented a very high performance digital PID controller loop in an FPGA, detailing why an FPGA was chosen, as well as PID control considerations specific to an FPGA implementation and its verification and HW/SW integration.