Development of a Distributed Multi-rate Motion Control System Using USB

This paper describes a PC-based distributed multi-rate realtime control system using USB protocol, which is developed as a general motion controller. The control system consists of two control programs: one running at 1 kHz sampling rate on a PC with Linux and another running at 10 kHz sampling rate on a remotely located motion control card called RASID (remote axis serial interface device). Two programs communicates through USB at every 1 msec. A USB communication driver is developed to ensured the 1 msec desired communication time. The main program running on the PC generates reference trajectory at 1 kHz and send it to the RASID through USB and RASIDs located near the motors gather the sensor information and execute the low-level control at 10 kHz. The USB-based connectivity reduces the wiring harness and eventually the manufacturing cost of the machine. The multi-rate nature of the developed system improves the control capability. The effect of sampling rate is analyzed and simulated.