Posted inMisc Research

Quadruped Control Full Stack Development Kit

Just sharing this announcement with the Robots for Roboticists community. I have not had a chance to use this yet. I know I generally only share things that I have used, but I felt this was worth sharing. If you try it out, let us know how it works. Announcing Quad-SDK! A full-stack quadruped control code open source, so anyone…
Servotronix Motion Coordinator
Posted inElectrical & Electronics Software & Algorithms Systems & Sensors

Motion Coordinator Gateways: Make interfacing to motor controllers easier

Often we need to communicate with motor controllers from different vendors. Writing software drivers for each one can be a pain and time consuming. Other times we need to use motor controllers utilizing EtherCAT or CANopen, but talking to those drives from our computers is difficult to implement. One solution is using a motion coordinator as a gateway. Sample layout…
hall detection
Posted inElectrical & Electronics

Controlling Brushless DC motor with no Encoders

This is just a quick post on controlling DC brushless motors with no encoders. This post applies to brushless motors that typically use hall sensors for commutation. This post does not apply to the hall-less ESC (electronic speed control) motors that typically run at very high speeds and are used for things such as quadcopters and boats. To go back…
PID equations
Posted inSoftware & Algorithms Systems & Sensors

PID Control (with code), Verification, and Scheduling

Hi allPID controllers are the workhorse of the controls world. PID controllers have the goal of taking some error in your system and reducing it to 0. While there are many other control strategies out there PID is probably the most common (unless you count human control) outside of just setting a setpoint. There are many advanced control strategies out…
CAN topology
Posted inComputing & Networking Electrical & Electronics

CAN bus (CANopen & CiA) for Motor Control

A Controller Area Network, or CAN for short is a common message based protocol used in cars and other vehicles. If you are trying to interface with a car/truck/bulldozer, there is a good chance that you will be reading data its CAN bus, and sending it commands via its CAN bus. It is also used in industrial/robotic applications such as…
motor architectures
Posted inElectrical & Electronics

Motor Controllers & Amplifiers

Hi all I recently wrote a post on different types of motors and feedback options, now I want to talk about how to control those motors. Each motor is often refereed to an "axis", so a 8 axis motor controller can control up to 8 motors. There are two different components used in the control of motors and people often…