A novel command generation method with variable feedrate utilizing FGPA for motor drives

This paper focuses on a novel command generator for servo-motor drives to be used as an integral part of their motion controllers. The method, which incorporates a new data compression algorithm, is capable of generating trajectory data at variable rates. In this paradigm, higher-order differences of a given trajectory (i.e. position) are first computed and thus the resulting data are compressed via the proposed technique. The generation of the commands is carried out according to the feedrate (i.e. the speed along the trajectory) set by the external logic dynamically. The paper discusses the implementation of the method on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). During implementation Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language (VHDL) is used rather than using embedded processors on the FPGA chip. The performance of the method is assessed according to the resources used in the FPGA chip on the development board and these results are also compared with the same approach without an interpolator.