The Professional Engineer and Micro-Electronics

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The Professional Engineer and Micro-Electronics

The Professional Engineer and Micro-Electronics

Design and development of embedded control system for robot motion control, involving interfacing a microcontroller to a stepping motor and developing a  drive program for the  motor that includes its up and down velocity ramping.

Microelectronics

Assignment Brief:

Design and development of embedded control system for robot motion control, involving interfacing a microcontroller to a stepping motor and developing a  drive program for the motor that includes its up and down velocity ramping.

A small robot with a stepping motor drive is to be designed for unloading components from a die casting machine or an injection moulding machine. The robot must have a very fast basic cycle time. A typical time period of five seconds is available for the robot arm to enter the working area, grip the injection moulded or die cast component, retract it and withdraw from the injection moulding or the die casting machine. Few general purpose type robots are capable of actually satisfying these requirements. The inward linear movement of the robot arm into the mould area must be completed within one second. A typical linear velocity of 1 metre per second is required. While these requirements can be relaxed for some applications, there is still a need for a drive system which is capable of speeds of 1 m per second with controlled up and down velocity ramping. To reduce inertia effects and to allow the system to drive up to maximum velocity, a ramp up velocity change is to be provided with constant acceleration. Similarly, a ramp down movement with constant deceleration is to be used for a uniform reduction in velocity. In ramp up and down systems, loss of synchronisation can result at the points of high jerk. This process is illustrated in Fig. 1 

Figure1. Velocity-time profile in a ramp up and down system

         Requirements:

You are required to interface a microcontroller to the stepping motor used in the above mentioned robotic application and write a drive program to control the up and down velocity ramping of the stepper motor to facilitated particular speed up and slow down motions of the robot to meet the robot’s approach and positioning tasks requirements.

You are specifically required to:

i) Describe the interfacing of the microcontroller to the stepping motor ii)   Develop a drive program that includes the satisfactory ramp generation     functions (ramp-up and ramp-down movements ) as shown in Figure 1. 

   iii)         Download the drive program into the microcontroller target and     demonstrate the programmed up and down velocity ramping of the      stepper motor.