- Hardware structure: simple but flexible.
- PCI IP core: open-source. Downloaded from opencores.org
- Data transfer speed of the PCI digital IO board without using DMA: 66.8 Mbits/sec on 33MHz 32-bit PCI bus.
More and better robots for everyone
Building and running openPOWERLINK v2.1.1 demos on Linux PCs
1. Ubuntu14.04:
2. Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 12.04, Debian Jessie :
3. Kernel 3.18.11-rt on Ubuntu 14.10:
Details of the “Ethernet Powerlink” can be found at
www.ethernet-powerlink.org
USB Comminication speed between a host computer/board and the motion-control FPGA.
1. Experiment setup.
2. Experiment results.
Motion-control FPGA:
Internal structure of the motion-control FPGA:
Design of 6-axis serial and USB motion cards:
1. Motion card with serial interace.
2. Motion card with USB interface.
PC-based motion controller with USB interface:
Examples of FPGA board with USB interface:
FTDI FT2232H for USB interace:
1. Interface A port of the FT2232H: asynchronous FIFO mode.
2. Interface B port of the FT2232H: UART mode.
Connecting FT2232H to FPGA module:
1. XFC-XC3S50AN FPGA module and FTDI FT2232H mini module:
VCCAUX of the FPGA = 3.3V
2. Open3S3500E board and the FTDI FT2232H mini module:
VCCAUX of the FPGA = 2.5V
“industrial-robot experts” are those who have some experience of “touching” industrial robots ?
(from http://www.nature.com/ki/journal/v62/n5/fig_tab/4493262f1.html)
“touching” industrial robots is the beginning of developing industrial robots, not the end.
Some people tear off industrial robots until they can find their familiar pieces such as kinematics, dynamics, control, power electronics, operating system, programming language, and so on. And then, they claim “I do industrial robots, too.”
R & D of industrial robots may start with identifying the vital pieces of industrial robots. Simply taking good stuffs from other areas and combining them, results in a Chimera (in Greek myth, the Chimera is a fire-breathing creature that has the body of a goat, the head of a lion and the tail of a serpent ).
Aristoteles said, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” What turns the sum of individual parts or pieces into the whole ?
Fortunately, we do not need to re-invent industrial robots. Industrial robots has been aound for more than 40 years. “Industrial-robot experts” already know what are good or bad for industrial robots.
Assuming all the compulations are done by a PC or an external processor, I designed a motion-control FPGA as follows:
If a soft processor such as MIcroBlaze or Nios II is placed on the FPGA, construction of a standalone motion controller (without a PC or an external processor) is possible.
Because both MicroBlaze and NIOS II are Linux/Xenomai-ready, porting Linux/Xenomai software to MicroBlazer or NIOS II is trivial.