The Research On Multi-Core Embedded Motion Control System

As an important technology in manufacturing, motion control system has greatly improved the overall level of modern manufacturing. No matter in the field of robotics, numerical control technology, industrial automation, or in machining turning, the motion control system plays an indispensable role. According to the current situation, CNC motion control systems, PC based motion control systems and PLC based motion control modules are the main types of motion control system. There is no denying that these types of control system which have been greatly improved of their accuracy, stability, openness and other aspects, have made outstanding contributions to the technology development and progress. However, these systems failed to achieve the integration of low-cost, high performance, and high stability. This paper proposes a multi-core embedded motion control system based on the PLC, which was not only stable and reliable but also simple and low-cost.In this paper, the motion control system uses the concept of hardware and software co-design. The logic control and the motion control are achieved respectively by the two ARM Cortex-M3processors. The hardware system is composed of a control module, a communication module, a movement drive module, and an I/O module, which aimed at providing a stable hardware platform. The unified ladder programming platform has been achieved for PLC control and motion control, offering a convenient development environment for motion control system. Currently the single embedded processor cannot well handle logic tasks and complex motion control at the same time. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a multi-core dedicated control system, which has6-axis synchronization control and64I/O control. Second, according to the software model, this paper proposes a series of motion control instructions based on multi-processor. Through working with this multi-processor coordination and cooperation, it implements the parallel computing of various complex motion control algorithms, which has greatly improved the performance of the whole motion control system. Finally, the motion control instruction is embedded into the ladder diagram, so it is easy by using the ladder diagram to achieve the movement process control.Experiment results show that the embedded PLC motion control system is not only low-cost, high integration, but also has strong scalability, which improves the whole system stability. Finally, integrating the current development situation, this paper points out the problem in the design of motion control system and the further research direction.