By submitting this form, you are agreeing to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
A robot arm is positioned with a 100-m accuracy thanks to real-time control, which accurately regulates the motor’s position and speed. The motor position as well as the current and voltage levels are continuously measured to achieve this accuracy.
The processing unit evaluates the calculated values in comparison to the measured values. The processing unit modifies the motor’s PWM signal in response to the findings. To meet the precision and timing requirements of the system, the entire operation must take place in a matter of microseconds.
The Global Real-Time Motion Controller market accounted for $XX Billion in 2022 and is anticipated to reach $XX Billion by 2030, registering a CAGR of XX% from 2023 to 2030.
The first EtherCAT slave controllers with integrated real-time motor control peripherals and high voltage I/O have been introduced by Trinamic. First EtherCAT slave controllers in the world featuring 24V high voltage I/Os and two inbuilt switching regulators are the TMC8461 and TMC8462.
In order to save space on the board, the TMC8462 also includes two integrated Ethernet PHYs. Both ICs remove latency through the use of PWM and Step/Dir I/O peripherals, which render routing through the firmware of an application processor unnecessary.
This makes them perfect for industrial IoT, automation, and other applications needing real-time reaction.
In the embedded automation market, where limited space drives miniaturisation, they anticipate EtherCAT to become more relevant.
In order to meet this requirement, they created the TMC8461 and TMC8462 as what they refer to as a “U-Chip,” which has all of the elements of an embedded EtherCAT slave with the exception of the microcontroller since developers frequently stick with microcontrollers and their associated development environments.
The slave controllers extend the functionality of the EtherCAT core technology with a wide range of peripherals and features, including an integrated smart-peripherals block that can be accessed from an MCU or EtherCAT master, a PWM unit and Step/Dir interface, as well as an SPI master and encoder interface that can be directly mapped to the PDO (Process Data Object) by the memory manager.
A latency-free read from an ADC, encoder, or DAC is possible thanks to this special SPI interface.
