Electronics

This is still TBD.

Control interface to PC

  1. KFlop motion controller
    • 10khz loop speed is very good
    • support for user programs
    • already has path following
    • (can this board support our kinematics natively?)
    • (can we inject measured KV,KA for feedforward?)
  1. Computer in the loop control
    • Interface board likely to be expensive
      • for example Mesa electronics interface board is similar price to kflop
    • processing overhead will be high for a 3-5 axis system
    • difficult to maintain deterministic timing in windows
    • likely to top out at 1.5-2khz loop rate

Motor drive

Will need a high power brushless motor drive for the 3 linear motors in the robot
Will need brush / brushless drives for the motors in the pick head

Both control approaches above can provide a torque command signal as a PWM to command the drives.

Need to find suitable open source projects, or commercial drives to use.