Design of Motion Control System for Robot Car Based on DSP

Min Xu1, Huazhen Zhang1, Hongji Tang1

1. School of Electrical Engineering and Automation, Xiamen University of Technology, Xiamen 361024
E-mail: 153102035@stu.xmut.edu.cn

Abstract: Based on research of the robot car’s motion control system, TMS320f2811 chip which produced by Texas
Instruments (TI) was used as the core chip of the control circuit. How to design the control circuit of robot car was
illustrated in this paper from hardware part and software part. The design of motion control system for robot car based on
DSP technology and integrated-separated PI control algorithm was put forward, which guarantee the control accuracy
and improve the real time control. It is proved by practice that this scheme of design is effective for the robot car’s
motion control system.
Key Words: The Robot Car, DSP, PI Control Algorithm

data processing is wonderful and short operation time, fast

1 INTRODUCTION calculating speed and low working voltage makes itself
The robot car is the most important part of the whole robot more advantageous.
system. A series of scientific research fields including The functional parameters of TMS320F2811 chip are
visual processing, artificial intelligence and automatic shown in Table 1.
control are involved in this system. The motion control
Table1. Functional Parameters of TMS320F2811 Chip
system for robot car should has these functions such as
driving motors, wireless communication and etc. It can be CPU 32-bits
divided into four subsystems containing vision subsystem,
Program Storage 256K bytes
decision-making subsystem, communication subsystem
and robot car subsystem. Data Storage 34K bytes
Among these subsystems, cameras and visual processing CLK 150 MHz
software compose vision subsystem; Decision-making Pipeline 8 levels
subsystem analyses the data from actual scenes and issue
Package 128 TQFP
commands to instruct the robot car and mechanical arm.
Besides, what the design calls for are as follows: Data Input Channel 12-bits
(1) The motion control system should has enough Data Output Channel 3 panels, 20A
capability to drive four motors which have The requirement of chip’s CLK is to continuously and
omnidirectional actuators. Therefore four or more steadily send out clock without any burrs. Crystal circuit
independent motor driving units are in need; integrated in DSP could generates CLK signal when there
(2) Current and velocity feedback loop should be applied exists one crystal and proper capacitance of capacity
in control circuits; oscillator between XTAL1/CLKIN and XTALZ pin. It will
(3) Auxiliary function such as testing voltage of batteries runs smoothly after fulfilling rigorous requirements.
and testing current of circuits should be reflected in it. However, the oscillator circuit could be affected by
temperature and working voltage of the chip.
2 DESIGN OF HARDWARE CIRCUIT FOR The KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are as follows:
MOTION CONTROL SYSTEM (1) 32-bit fixed point DSP chip, its running frequency is
150 MHZ;
2.1 Choose The DSP Chip (2) The capacity of on-chip flash and SRAM is up to 256
The control instruction of robot platform is issued by KB and 34 KB;
processor, which is the body of underlying control circuits. (3) 12-bit ADC, switching time is 80 ns and it has 16 input
Many factors should be taken into consider including channels;
parameters of itself and its performance about how to (4) Mixed 16-bit and 32-bit order set;
choose suitable chips. In this paper, TMS320f2811 chip (5) PWM microprocessor owns programmable dead band
produced by TI was adopted, which is the latest and up to six protection trigger units, which could
high-performance generation of 32-bit chip. The ability of produces any desired waveform.
TMS320f2811 chip produced by TI can meets all the needs
This work is supported by Science Foundation of the Fujian Province of the whole system. It could guarantees the robot car the
under Grant 2014H0047. strong ability to complete all the desired motion movement.

978-1-5090-4657-7/17/$31.00 2017
c IEEE 7494
Besides, the price of this kind of chip is low and we could waves based on control algorithm via motor-driving
download the program into the chip via CCS (Code circuits to adjust the motors. Once program runs out, the
Composer Studio) software time and again. In this way we reset unit will enforces the DSP to reset itself.
can easily adjust the motion control and take some As can be seen from the structure of this DSP chip, PWM
measures to deal with the possible emergencies. generators sends out PWM waves to the driver circuit and
then photo coders on each wheel will start to work. The
2.2 Structure and Working Principle of Hardware current of each wheel will be tested by devices so as to
Circuit ensure the security of the whole system.
As can be seen from Figure 1, velocity closed-loop is What’s more, the directions are conveyed by wireless
realized by these parts such as control module, driving communication module to control the movement of robot
module, motors and optical-electricity encoder. As for car.
position loop, it contains PC, communication module and Voltage stabilizing circuit is also an important part of this
camera module. motion control system. It could maintains the working
Position control loop voltage within the normal range. In this way, the security
Camera
and stability of motion control system is guaranteed.

Communication Receiver Control Driver

2.4 MOS Transistor In Driving Board
PC module module module module
Motor

In order to ensure the working stability of electronic

Photo coder components in drivers and offer more accurate power
regulation, MOS transistor drivers which have high
current-driven ability are applied to provide 10 A or more
Speed control loop
current for each motor. Actual current and voltage testing
Fig 1. Structure of hardware circuit.
guarantees the security of driver and batteries. N-channel
Velocity closed-loop and position loop in the system forms MOS transistors which have larger capacity (Type
feedback mechanism. It makes the robot car could reacts to IRFS4010, Power Capacity 180 A, OnResistance 4 mohm )
different conditions through PC module and the robot car and high –voltage gate-driving circuit (Type IR2104) can
could works steadily at a limited speed and position. make motors run steadily without serious heating. In
Directions given out by PC module could impel the robot addition, new fully-integrated Hall Effect current testing
car to adjust speed and position conveniently and in good module (Type ACS756-100) is utilized to improve the
time. reliability of system.

2.3 DSP Motion Controller 2.5 Photoelectric Encoder

The whole structure of motion control system is shown in A high-precision encoder with an accuracy of 1000 lines is
Figure 2. used as the photoelectric encoder in motion control system.
Wireless receiving
module
It consists of a lens-mounted LED light source and a
detection IC, which is packaged in a small plastic package.
SCI
Voltage stabilizing circuit
Vcc Reset
Due to the highly calibrated light source and the unique
RS
SPXO CLKIN
circuit
photodetector array, the module is very tolerant of high
QEP3 4

QEP1 2
faults tolerant capability. The module is small and easy to
be installed.
DSP Also it has very high resolution. The current rotation
direction will be available by means of detecting the phase
Current Current and the velocity of each wheel will be available by
test test
detecting the frequency of signals. Through the QEP
PWM1,2&3,4 module inside DSP, the accuracy will be raised four times.
Left Right
wheel Driver Driver wheel By adopting the photoelectric encoder, we could quickly
Photo circuit circuit Photo
coder coder get the working state of robot car and the key parameters of
Fig 2. Structure of motion control system.
motion control system.

3 Design of Software Part For Motion Control

The total circuits are divided into several units such as DSP
System
unit, energy-providing unit, CLK unit, wireless receiving
unit, motor-driving unit and current testing unit. Among At present, the program method mixing assembly language
these units, energy-providing circuit supply the motors and with C language is wildly adopted in control program of the
control circuits with DC power; CLK circuit offers external robot car. It’s well-known that C language, the structural
clock to DSP chip; The control instruction of velocity given language, can makes the level of program clear and it’s
by upper computer is received by wireless receiving unit to convenient to maintain and debug. The main tasks of the
convey to SCI unit in DSP chip; QEP unit can obtains the DSP program include PID controlling of motors, wireless
actual velocity of motors; DSP unit will generates 4 PWM communication, AD sampling and human interaction. The

2017 29th Chinese Control And Decision Conference (CCDC) 7495

 velocity control subprogram circularly reads control which consist of fuzzy inference and PID controller are the
instruction (providing by serial port interrupt service same.
program) and rotational speed (providing by timer interrupt As is shown in Figure 3, DSP motion controllers mainly
service program). includes PID controllers and fuzzy inference systems. This
The data will be calculated by PID controller who obtains two parts of motion control system work together to adjust
controlled quantity output. PWM waves will be sent to angle and distance efficiently.
serial port receiving interrupt service program thus
instruction-receiving and signal-checking are realized.
CCS (Code Composer Studio) software plays an important
role in the motion control system. It is an integrated
development environment (IDE) that supports TI's family
of microcontrollers, embedded processors.
Code Composer Studio includes a complete set of tools for
developing and debugging embedded applications. It
contains C / C ++ compilers for optimization, source editors,
project build environments, debuggers, descriptors, and a
variety of other features. The intuitive IDE provides a
single user interface that helps to complete every step of the
application development process. Familiar tools and Fig 3. Structure of position loop.
interfaces allow users to start faster than ever before. Code
Composer Studio combines the benefits of the Eclipse 4 CONCLUSION
software framework with TI's advanced embedded
debugging capabilities to provide embedded developers From what has been described above, it’s reasonable to
with a compelling and feature-rich development summarize several obvious advantages and characteristics
environment. of motion control system for Robot car based on DSP as
follows:
3.1 Control Algorithm of Motors (1) High efficient. Using DSP chip and PID algorithm as
Digital PID controller is applied in the rotational speed the key method to design the motion control system, it
adjustment system. Given the motors start instantly or set is successful to realize the complete movement of
point increases by a large margin, as a result, it will lead to robot car.
large deviation and large overshoot even oscillation in this (2) Reasonable design and good practicability. All the
system. So integrated-separated PI control algorithm is functions desired come true when each part contributes
adopted in driving motors. The calculation formula is as in their own special way.
follow: (3) Combination of hardware part and software part makes
the motion control system creatively.
­ N
8 N  ≤ 8 PD[
°.3HN+ β.L ¦HM ˄1˅ Experiments show that the design of motion control system
8N = ®
°
M =
8 N  > 8 PD[ for Robot car based on DSP and integrated-separated PI
± 8
¯ PD[ control algorithm is effective to enhance the real time
U˄k˅is the discretization output, e(k ) is the deviation,
control under the condition of guaranteeing precision. As
for position loop, the PID algorithm not only ensure the
U max is the maximum output, K p ǃ K i stand for stability but also improve the self-adoption ability, which
gains good control effect. The technology applied in this
adjustment factor of PI, β is integrated-separated factor. paper could be used for a reference for other control system
­ HN  ≤ ε of mobile robots.
β =® ˄2˅
¯ HN  > ε
It is beneficial to modify the motion control system via
integrated-separated PI control algorithm. In this way the
robot car will works more smoothly.
3.2 Position Loop of Control System
Position loop controller utilizes fuzzy and self-turning
online PID algorithm. It will adjusts the parameters of PID
controller in real time based on fuzzy inference which
improves the self-adoption ability.
As is shown in Figure 3, one group is used to control the
rotational motion of robot car, the other is used to control
the linear motion. The structure and principle of two groups
7496 2017 29th Chinese Control And Decision Conference (CCDC)
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2017 29th Chinese Control And Decision Conference (CCDC) 7497