Advanced motion control of mechatronic systems via a high-speed DSP and a parallel processing transputer network

This paper presents a system for implementing advanced motion control using a floating-point digital signal processor (DSP) and a transputer-based parallel processing system. The discussion includes a brief look at the advantages of using DSPs in real-time control applications and the techniques of integrating DSPs with parallel processing transputer networks to enhance computing power. The main focus of this paper is the design of a system that combines the excellent real-time response of the Texas Instruments TMS320C30 DSP with the superior computational power of a parallel processing system based on Intel i860 RISC processors and Inmos transputers. The software of the system is hosted in the popular MATLAB environment to provide a simple user interface as well as many powerful mathematical tools. The system also includes a simulation package to allow rapid verification of the user´s program and control algorithm. The system is ideal for implementing advanced motion control experiments requiring high speed floating point computations and fast sampling rates. A complex adaptive motor control experiment is presented in this paper to illustrate the use of the system