Industrial robot arm controller based on programmable System-on-Chip device

Abstract

Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and, recently, System on Chip (SoC) devices have been applied in a wide area of applications due to their flexibility for real-time implementations, increasing the processing capability on hardware as well as the speed of processing information in real-time. The most important applications based on FPGA/SoC devices are focused on signal/image processing, Internet of Things (IoT) technology, artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, energy systems applications, automatic control and industrial applications. This paper develops a robot arm controller based on a programmable System-OnChip (SoC) device that combines the high-performance and flexibility of a CPU and the processing power of an FPGA. The CPU consists of a dual-core ARM processor that handles algorithm calculations, motion planning and manages communication and data manipulation. FPGA is mainly used to generate signals to control servo and read the feedback signals from encoders. Data from the ARM processor is transferred to the programmable logic side via the AXI protocol. This combination delivers superior parallel-processing and computing power, real-time performance and versatile connectivity. Additionally, having the complete controller on a single chip allows the hardware design to be simpler, more reliable, and less expensive.