SOFTMOTION – NEW OPEN STANDARDS CREATE POWERFUL MOTION CONTROL SYSTEMS
23 January 2002 - Nyquist Industrial Control

SoftMotion, a new approach to Motion Control developed by Nyquist Industrial Control, allows OEM customers to easily adapt a Motion Control system to their specific needs. The approach is based on a standard PC-based platform and open standards, and builds rugged and decentralised systems.

Conventional, proprietary Motion Control systems are often inflexible. They are based on a limited choice of hardware, which makes it difficult to accommodate changes to the system. In contrast, Nyquist's approach uses a standard PC, standard available external connections like Ethernet and FireWire, and standard Windows operating systems and drivers. The decentralised architecture thus uses standard network connections to the Motion Controllers. In this true 'SoftMotion' approach, the PC is involved only in executing higher-level motion software such as trajectory generation. Hardware related Motion Control is performed outside the PC, across the network.

This powerful new approach has enabled the company to create a robust, open platform called NYCe3000 that is accessible at all levels. It is also a platform that OEM customers can easily adapt to their demands. The graphical user interface, I/O processing and calculation of motion sequences, trajectory generation and kinematics are all accessible under Windows NT and NT Embedded, allowing for simple and flexible programming. Open software interfaces give access to an array of sophisticated functions such as synchronised multi-axis Motion Control, electronic camming and gearing, and complete trajectory generation capabilities.

The Motion Controllers ensure the hard real-time integrity of the total system. The PC thus need not meet hard real-time requirements, and peer-to-peer communication between the Motion Controllers relieves the PC of the need to synchronise them. Hence, the PC and associated software do not have to meet 'hard' real-time requirements. The PC needs only to send commands quickly enough to the Motion Controllers.

Nyquist selected FireWire (IEEE-1394), because its 400-Mbit/s transmission speed is fast enough for high-speed industrial control systems, with isochronous data transport providing the guaranteed bandwidth and latency required for high-speed data transfer over multiple channels. In addition, FireWire offers the guaranteed response times essential to Motion Control applications.

The modern technology trend toward replacing hardware solutions with software will only increase as ever more functionality becomes available in software. The 'SoftMotion' approach is therefore a logical step for OEM equipment manufactures. Using the PC as a component and replacing the plug-in cards by the already available standard FireWire network reduces not only the initial costs of the complete system, but also gives better control over the total cost of ownership during the complete life cycle of the Motion Control system.

http://www.nyquist.com

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