The Development of a Mechatronic Control System for Modular Reconfigurable Machine Tools

摘要

Modular Reconfigurable Machine tools have been developed to display a variation of degrees of freedom and processing functions on a single platform. The reconfigurability of the hardware is derived from the ability to alter the modular constituents of the mechanical architecture. The scalability of reconfigurable machinery required the development of a control system that is capable of managing a platform with a reconfigurable kinematic architecture and a varying number of sensors and actuators after each reconfiguration cycle. This paper presents the development of a suitable modular mechatronic control system. The focus of control development was the facilitation of seamless system integration between modular hardware and the controller at both hardware and software levels. A reference model for the control implementation is presented, including a script method for the reconfiguration of a modular machines physical representation in software. An appropriate force control method is identified and interpolation and servo control algorithms are presented and evaluated.