Digital robot control having improved arm joint motor control and feedback torque current sensing systems

摘要

A digital control [Fig. 2] for a multiaxis robot [Fig. 1] includes a pulse width modulation (PWM) circuit [Fig. 58] which drives the arm joint motors (21-26) through a motor control loop. Pulse width modulated control signals (A1, A2, B1, B2) operate power switches in a power bridge [Fig. 5 or Fig. 11 B] to control the current to each robot joint motor. In addition, the PWM circuit provides time stabilized current sampling [Fig. 12] synchronized to the sampling frequency of position and velocity loops in the robot control. The PWM scheme enables accurate motor current measurement through usage of a single current sense resistor (59 or 63) independent of the number of legs in a power amplifier configuration. This scheme permits commercially available, low cost, power blocks to be used for implementation of robot control system power amplifiers. Moreover, the PWM circuitry may be adapted for controlling either a brush [Fig. 5] or brushless [Fig. 11A] type DC arm joint motor.