An embedded robot controller based on ARM and FPGA

Abstract

This paper proposes an embedded robot controller based on ARM and FPGA. The adoption of ARM and FPGA can increase the flexibility of the controller greatly. ARM is mainly used to do the algorithm calculation and communicate with PC. FPGA is mainly used to generate the servo control signals and read the feedback signals from the servo system. Due to the reconfigurable FPGA, this controller is very flexible and it can be used to control most low degree of freedom robot arms. In our experiments, these two chips can work together efficiently. In addition, both ARM and FPGA chips are low power consumption and low-cost. This approach can help make a flexible robot controller with high performance and low cost.