A performance evaluation and task scheduling of EtherCAT networked soft motion control system (ISR 2013)

In this paper, we evaluate the performance of networked soft motion control system for real-time applications like compliance control in robotics. We engage EtherCAT as the high speed industrial network since it is widely used for soft motion control thanks to its software master stack. The performance of networked control system is constrained by fixed cyclic communication capacity. For most of advanced motion control applications, more than 1kHz control is required in real time. A networked soft motion control system with EtherCAT is proposed and its communication-constrained performance is tested up to 10kHz control. It is experimentally proven that even the networked soft motion control system is applicable in realtime applications.