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Motion Control and Its Applications
运动控制及其应用
As automation and robotics spread into consumer as well as industrial applications, motion control and motor drives are moving into areas where they’ve never been needed in the past, and various electric motors have become ubiquitous. From smart home to smart factory, the trend toward automating all aspects of the human environment has resulted in an explosion in the deployment of motion-controlled systems. With the prevailing trend of Moore’s law, it seems as though everything is going digital. However, the physical control of the “analog” world is NOT going away. Motion control plays a vital role in connecting the physical and digital worlds, by translating digital data into physical motion.
随着自动化和机器人进入消费和工业领域，运动控制和电机驱动正在进入过去从未涉及的领域，各种电机已无处不在。从智能家居到智能工厂，人类生存环境方方面面的自动化趋势引发了运动控制系统的大规模部署。随着摩尔定律的盛行，似乎一切事物都在数字化，然而，“模拟”世界的物理控制并没有消失，通过将数字数据转换为物理运动，运动控制在连接物理世界和数字世界中发挥着至关重要的作用。
Motion control is the part of automation that handles the kinematics and the electromechanical portion of machines in a deliberate manner. The primary components of a motion control system are the controller and the driver stage. Typical motion control tasks include trajectory planning, motion profile-generation, movement, various system safety monitoring and closed-loop operation.
运动控制是自动化的一个分支，以一种严谨可控的方式来处理机器的运动和机电部分。运动控制系统主要包括运动控制器和驱动部分。典型的运动控制任务包括轨迹规划、运动档案生成、运动执行、各种系统安全监控以及闭环控制。
As the level of automation continues to rise, the number of electric motors used is dramatically increased in more applications and different environments. It requires electric motor subsystems with small footprint, light weight, high power and intelligence density, negligible emissions of electromagnetic interference, utmost reliability, ease to use, readiness to be connected, and uncompromised ruggedness and safety.
随着自动化水平的不断提升，电机在更多的应用场景和不同环境中的使用数量急剧增加。与此同时也对电机系统提出了更高的要求，包括体积小，重量轻，高功率和智能密度，可忽略的电磁干扰排放，极限可靠性，易用性，易连接性，耐用性和安全性。
Complex algorithms already existed for motor/motion control, but they could only be used in high-end expensive applications due to the lack of small, powerful yet affordable controllers. Now these algorithms are going mainstream, and it’s become feasible to use them in small embedded systems. At the same time, due to increasing integration motion control is becoming a secondary processing task. Today, engineers must be focused primarily on their application, so their primary processing tasks are on the application level, for example speech recognition, image processing, visual computing, encryption/decryption, and artificial intelligence.
复杂的电机或运动控制算法早已存在，但由于缺少体积小、性能强大且价格实惠的微处理器，这些复杂算法只能使用于高端昂贵的应用。现如今，这些算法正在成为主流，并且在小型嵌入式系统中的应用也变得可行。同时，由于集成度的提升，运动控制在逐步演变为从属的处理任务。如今，工程师们必须首先专注在他们的应用上，所以他们的主要处理任务是在应用层，例如语音识别，图像处理，视觉计算，加密/解密和人工智能。
More processing complexity also comes from the fact that communication now includes control and feedback channels, as well as low-latency, high-bandwidth, bus-level communications interfaces. Also, the realization of synchronicity, real-time behavior, and fast response times is already mandatory for synchronizing multiple axes.
控制、反馈通道的通信以及低延时、高带宽的总线通信接口大大增加了处理的复杂度。同时，同步、实时动作以及快速响应时间的实现已成为多轴同步的硬性要求。
As a consequence of these changes is that in many designs motion control has become a building block in a system. The engineer must now consider not just a motor and how fast it spins, but also how it interacts with all the other building blocks in a real hardware design, as well as from the software point of view: for example, sensors, another motorized axis in the same machine or on the same board, or other automated machines connected via different kinds of networks.
由于上述的这些变化，运动控制已经成为了许多系统设计中的基本组成部分。工程师们需要考虑的问题已不仅仅是电机以及转速，还需考虑运动控制如何与系统中其他软硬件模块交互，例如传感器，同一台机器或板卡上的其他运动控制轴，亦或是通过不同网络互连的其他自动化机器。
We interviewed customers what are the top four motion control design questions, problems, or issues they face again and again. The interviewees include owners, CTOs, engineers as well as marketing professionals.
我们采访了很多的客户，包括企业的创始人，首席技术官，工程师以及市场专家，询问他们所面临的和运动控制设计相关的四大问题。
• Time-to-market – This absolutely scores #1 on our list. Requirements are getting tighter every day for the whole development cycle, including prototyping and the other development stages, all the way through testing and production. So, products used for the motion control part of a system must be easy to understand, easy to integrate and easy to use. Fast design-in means customers can start focusing on their own application faster.
• 上市时间 – 毫无疑问的排在第1位。客户对整个项目研发周期的要求在日益缩短，包括从原型验证等开发阶段，到测试和量产阶段。因此，应用于系统中运动控制部分的产品必须易于理解，易于集成且易于使用。快速导入设计意味着客户可以更快的开始着手于他们自己的应用。
• Form Factor - Especially in embedded motion control motors are getting smaller, and so is the available space for some kind of driver stage or embedded electronics. Engineers are looking for the most amount of integration, both functionally and physically, and in the smallest possible space. This is true of both silicon and product packaging.
• 体积因数 – 尤其是在嵌入式运动控制中，电机在越变越小，同时留给驱动电路或嵌入式电子元件的空间也在变小。工程师们一直在寻求在尽可能最小的体积内实现功能和物理上的最高集成度。这样的要求同样适用于芯片设计和封装。
• Motion Quality - The performance requirements of motor control and motion control applications are increasing, so the overall quality of these designs needs to increase, too. The concept of motion control quality encompasses multiple dimensions that all affect end-product quality, including but not limited to: noise, vibration, efficiency, dynamic behavior.
• 运动质量 – 电机控制和运动控制应用的性能要求越来越高，所以针对设计的整体质量要求也在提升。运动控制质量的概念包含多个影响最终产品质量的维度，包括但不仅限于噪声、振动、效率和动态性能。
• Cost - The pressure on cutting costs is ongoing. This includes BOM cost in volume manufacturing and total cost of ownership.
• 成本 – 降低成本的压力一直存在，包括批量生产的BOM成本以及总体投入成本。
In networked systems and environments, engineers’ thinking is becoming more software-centric and focused on ready-to-use building blocks and components that come with a well defined, or even standardized, interface and API, and can easily be integrated. In such a world, motion control is just one part of a system. Increased integration - SoCs, ASSPs, and other highly integrated semiconductors used for motion control can include analog blocks (ADCs, gate drivers, voltage regulators), digital standard blocks (commutation logic, PWM) and the glue logic to coordinate the two blocks. Recently, the trend starts to integrate various types of intellectual property that makes motion control subsystem even smarter and more complex. Motion control is becoming a building block!
在网络互联的系统和环境中，工程师们的思维越来越以软件为中心，专注于使用现成的且易于集成的模组，这些模组通常具有定义明确的甚至是标准化的接口和API。如此一来，运动控制仅仅是系统中的一个部分。运动控制所使用的SoC，ASSP以及其他半导体器件的集成度越来越高，通常内置模拟模块（ADC，预驱，稳压电源），数字标准模块（变换逻辑，PWM）以及用于协调两个模块的胶合逻辑。近来，集成更多使运动控制更加智能和复杂的的IP正成为一种趋势。总而言之，运动控制正在变成应用系统中的一个重要组成部分。
Motion control will become ubiquitous - The world will become more and more fully automated. Motion control will continue taking over many more applications, tasks, and needs within the personal and industrial environments in an unnoticed way.
运动控制将会变得无所不在，我们所处的世界也将越来越自动化。运动控制将继续以一种潜移默化的方式在个人和工业环境中接管越来越多的应用、任务和需求。
Originated from Fairchild semiconductor, our team at Spintrol is dedicated to motion control. In early 2019, our Gen3 devices enter mass production. These devices are tailored for motion control to speed up time-to-market, increase level of integration, reduce total ownership cost, enhance motion quality, and provide versatile communication ports. For more information, please email: sales@spintrol.com.
源自仙童半导体的Spintrol团队致力于运动控制领域。2019年初，我们的第三代产品进入量产。这些产品专为运动控制应用所设计，可以帮助客户缩短上市研发时间，提高系统的集成度，减少总投入成本，提升运动控制性能以及提供丰富的通信接口。更多信息，欢迎来信：sales@spintrol.com。
We are fascinated to bring out the best motion control technology at Spintrol. We are committed to build great products to make our mother planet a better place to live! If you want to be part of this mission, please email: hr@spintrol.com.
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