This Close Loop Brushless Direct Current (BLDC) Motion Control Reference Design describes and demonstrates an implementation of Industrial high-end encoder on real-time position feedback for speed control in the Closed-loop BLDC motor control system. It provides an example usage of integrating the encoder master IP and the motor control IP into a RISCV embedded control system on Lattice Certus NX FPGA device. The RD comes together with a demo GUI application for user to configure and run the BLDC motor.
Motion control is a sub-field of automation that involves the precise movement of machine components. To construct a complete system, several crucial components are required:
- Motion Controller: controls the movement trajectories, e.g. microcontroller
- Actuators: convert electrical energy into mechanical motion, e.g. a BLDC motor.
- Drivers/Amplifiers: provide the necessary power to the actuators based on controller, e.g. a motor driver board.
- Feedback Sensors: provide real-time data on position for accurate speed control, e.g. an encoder.
The types of control mainly consist of:
- Open-Loop Control: operates without feedback, relying on predefined calculations.
- Closed-Loop Control: uses real-time feedback from feedback sensors to adjust the motion.
FPGA offers flexibility in design, allowing for easy integration of feedback sensors such as encoders with various communication protocols and interfaces. Industrial encoders such as absolute encoder provides position data which can be processed by the FPGA to facilitate development of accurate motion control algorithms. In addition, FPGAs excel at handling real-time data processing where it can make immediate adjustments with low latency to the motor control signals with the continuous position feedback from absolute encoders. Lattice low-power FPGAs offer flexibility on implementing custom control algorithms as necessary for different motor control requirements.