Since the early 1980s , general-purpose motion controllers have been used in various industries abroad, especially in the microelectronics industry. At that time, the application scale and industry coverage of motion controllers in China were very small, and no domestic manufacturers had developed general-purpose motion controller products.
Currently, the products offered by domestic motion controller manufacturers can be roughly divided into three categories:
(1) Motion controllers based on microcontrollers or microprocessors. These motion controllers are relatively slow, have low precision, and are relatively inexpensive. They are used in applications requiring only low-speed point-to-point motion control and contour motion control where trajectory requirements are not high.
(2) Motion controllers using dedicated application-specific integrated circuits ( ASICs ) as the core processor. These controllers have a relatively simple structure, but most can only output pulse signals and operate in open-loop control mode. While they are generally suitable for single-axis point-to-point control, they are unsuitable for equipment requiring multi-axis coordinated motion and high-speed trajectory interpolation control. Because they lack continuous interpolation and look-ahead functionality , they are unsuitable, especially for applications with numerous small, continuous movements, such as mold engraving. Furthermore, due to hardware resource limitations, their circular interpolation algorithms typically employ a point-by-point comparison method, resulting in low accuracy.
(3) Open motion controllers based on PC bus with DSP and FPGA as core processors. These open motion controllers use a DSP chip as the core processor and a PC as the information processing platform. The motion controller is embedded in the PC as a plug-in card , i.e., a "PC + motion controller " model. This organically combines the information processing capabilities and open nature of the PC with the motion trajectory control capabilities of the motion controller, resulting in strong information processing capabilities, high openness, accurate motion trajectory control, and good versatility. These motion controllers fully utilize the high-speed data processing capabilities of the DSP and the powerful logic processing capabilities of the FPGA , facilitating the design of fully functional and high-performance motion controllers. These motion controllers typically provide on-board multi-axis coordinated motion control and complex motion trajectory planning, real-time interpolation calculations, error compensation, and servo filtering algorithms, enabling closed-loop control. Because they use FPGA technology for hardware design, motion controller suppliers can easily customize products according to customers' specific process and technical requirements, creating unique products.
