Electronics
This is still TBD.
Control interface to PC
- 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?)
- 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.