FPGA-Realization of a Motion Control IC for Robot Manipulator

Robotic control is currently an exciting and highly challenging research focus. Several solutions for implementing the control architecture for robots have been proposed (Kabuka et al., 1988; Yasuda, 2000; Li et al., 2003; Oh et al., 2003). Kabuka et al. (1998) apply two highperformance floating-point signal processors and a set of dedicated motion controllers to build a control system for a six-joint robots arm. Yasuda (2000) adopts a PC-based microcomputer and several PIC microcomputers to construct a distributed motion controller for mobile robots. Li et al. (2003) utilize an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) to implement autonomous fuzzy behavior control on mobile robot. Oh et al. (2003) present a DSP (Digital Signal Processor) and a FPGA to design the overall hardware system in controlling the motion of biped robots. However, these methods can only adopt PC-based microcomputer or the DSP chip to realize the software part or adopt the FPGA chip to implement the hardware part of the robotic control system. They do not provide an overall hardware/software solution by a single chip in implementing the motion control architecture of robot system. For the progress of VLSI technology, the Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) have been widely investigated due to their programmable hard-wired feature, fast time-to-market, shorter design cycle, embedding processor, low power consumption and higher density for implementing digital system. FPGA provides a compromise between the special-purpose ASIC (application specified integrated circuit) hardware and general-purpose processors (Wei et al., 2005). Hence, many practical applications in motor control (Zhou et al., 2004; Yang et al., 2006; Monmasson & Cirstea, 2007) and multi-axis motion control (Shao & Sun, 2005) have been studied, using the FPGA to realize the hardware component of the overall system. The novel FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) technology is able to combine an embedded processor IP (Intellectual Property) and an application IP to be an SoPC (Systemon-a-Programmable-Chip) developing environment (Xu et al., 2003; Altera, 2004; Hall & Hamblen, 2004), allowing a user to design an SoPC module by mixing hardware and software. The circuits required with fast processing but simple computation are suitable to be implemented by hardware in FPGA, and the highly complicated control algorithm with heavy computation can be realized by software in FPGA. Results that the software/hardware codesign function increase the programmable, flexibility of the designed digital system and reduce the development time. Additionally, software/hardware parallel processing enhances the controller performance. Our previous works (Kung & Shu, 2005; Kung et al., 2006; Kung &