A motion control system developed for research and education purposes

Research and education on motion control requires an easy-to-use and economic experimental apparatus, but present commercial products are expensive, complex in mechanism and hard to use them in general. In this paper, we present an interesting motion control apparatus for research and education which is easy-to-use and economic. For user flexibility, we use an open-source free operation system Linux and a free real-time kernel RTAI. The developed motion control system is reliable in mechanism, and fast enough to implement 100 microsecond sampling time for real-time control. The developed motion control system has been demonstrated by testing PD (proportional-plus-derivative) control and ZV (zero vibration) input shaping experimentally.