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Design Showcase
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Microelectronic Systems was
commissioned in 2006 to develop a complete suite of fully custom
designed electronics to form the control system for a two-arm 6 axis
cylindrical robot (pictured). Each arm is independently able to
move in rotation (waist), elevation (shoulder) and extension (forearm).
The two arm format allows for automation of tasks requiring coordinated
movement of two separate objects. The electronics has involved hardware and firmware
development of DSP controlled
brushless DC and 5-phase high resolution stepper drives for position
control of each axis to 0.2 mm. Communications interfaces
developed include a TCP/IP based Master Controller, CAN Bus, RS232 (for
peripheral devices) and BiSS (a two wire interface used for absolute
position encoders within the robot).
The robot was exhibited in January at the 2007 Lab
Automation conference in California. |
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This is an example of a
control board developed by Microelectronic Systems. It is used to
drive a bipolar stepper motor with programmable drive current and micro-stepping for higher resolution.
A packet-based communications interface allows full control of the motor and configuration settings
from a computer. Option switches are used to select one of 16
programmed personalities. |
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The BSD500 is currently BSD
Robotics' premier product. It provides a high degree of automation
within laboratories for applications including forensic and neonatal
screening. Our involvement in the development of
the BSD500 has been in upgrading the motor control boards (shown above)
and development of a multi-channel communications controller which
provides a USB connection to the machine.
Shown here is the BSD500 carousel, loaded with
microtitre plates and the punch. The machine predominantly uses
two phase bipolar stepper motors which are micro-stepped to provide
adequate resolution and lower audible noise. |
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BSD Robotics manufactures
equipment for laboratory automation. There are two mature products
that we are presently updating to: include USB communications, provide
additional firmware capabilities, improve firmware maintainability,
lower production cost, overcome part obsolescence and ensure ROHS
compliance.. The existing controller board
(pictured) includes an MCU with an external parallel memory bus and also
has many TTL logic ICs. The updated design is now mostly surface
mount and includes a CPLD which integrates the TTL logic functionality.
An Atmel AVR controller was selected to replace the 68HC11 and has
internal memory to obviate the need for the external memory and
associated bus. |
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