Motor controller designed for robotics based on microcontroller with integrated EtherCAT

Abstract

The paper focuses on our servo motor controller (SMC) design optimized for robotic applications. This controller is designed to be embedded inside robotic arms or joints to eliminate extensive cabling needed with external centralized controllers. It is based on a single Infineon XMC4800 microcontroller with integrated EtherCAT Slave Controller (ESC), powerful ARM Cortex-M4 CPU core and many peripherals suitable for motor control. This integrated solution provides precise control over distributed system timing. The hardware design contains two-axis three-phase inverter power stage with sigma-delta ADCs for high quality phase current measurement, interfaces for quadrature encoders or hall sensors and encoders with high-speed serial communication protocols and control part with a single microcontroller. The paper provides description of hardware design, software architecture spanning from low level parts to velocity and position control loops with code generated from user reconfigurable function block diagrams and real-time performance evaluation.