1. Eurobot 2007 DIIT Team Università degli Studi di Catania 13 giugno 2007

2. Motor Controller Hardware Design Software Design

3. What means Motor Controller? The Motion module changes motor’s velocity and controls trajectory, by means of a closed-loop control, thus allowing the robot to reach the desired object or position. Movement is based of two separately driven wheels.The basic idea is that the robot can change its direction by varying the relative rate of rotation of its wheels and hence does not require an additional steering motion. The general structure: – embedded system, – microcontroller, – h-bridge and motor.

4. Microchip technology offers a broad product portfolio to provide solutions for stepper, DC,brushless motor… MCUs 8-bit and 16-bit families to provide on-chip peripherals to design high-performance and precision motor controller system. Indeed, these peripherals include module that can generate the appropriate driving signals for motors. –High-speed 10-bit analog-to-digital converter –Specialized motor control PWM, Capture and Compare –Quadrature encoder (interface or input capture)‏ Hw Design…The choice! The solution….PIC18FXX31

5. Hardware Design

6. Hardware Design (1/7)‏ We realized a solution to manage two independent motors with an unique microcontroller. We realized a solution to manage two independent motors with an unique microcontroller. The PIC18F2431 was chosen as microcontroller, to achieve high performance, power control and safety management. It is equipped with some special peripherals as: Motion Feedback Module (MFM) with3-channel Input Capture Module and Quadrature Encoder Interface. 14-bit resolution Power Control PWM (PCPWM) Module with programmable dead-time insertion, complementary outputs.

7. Hardware Design (2/7)‏ The following figure represents schematic circuit of motor controller board.

8. The MFM Quadrature Encoder Interface provides precise rotor position feedback and/or velocity measurement. The 3-channel Input Capture can be used to detect the rotor state using Hall sensor feedback: in particular, Input Capture can measure edge- trigger, period or pulse signal and it is equipped with programmable prescaler to set periodicity of increase of the counter. Hardware Design (3/7)‏

9. Hardware Design (4/7)‏ The PCPWM can generate up to six complementary PWM outputs with dead- band time insertion. For this reason, we used Locked Anti-Phase configuration (LAP mode) to control the H-Bridge. CombinationPolarityEffect A & DForwardThe motor goes forward B & CBackward The motor goes backward A & BBlocked The motor is stopped NoneFree-running The motor is out of gear PWM is square wave with variable duty-cycle (low voltage and costant frequency signal) used to drive H-Bridge. Duty cycle 0 : max rotation speed in a verse Duty cycle 50%: motors are stop Duty cycle 100%: max rotation speed in other verse We used Locked Anti-Phase mode so that motors aren’t in Free Running Mode, when dutycycle is set 50% (to stop motors).

10. The STMicroelectronics L298N was selected to deliver power to the motors: it is a high voltage, high current dual full-bridge driver designed to accept standard TTL logic levels and drive inductive loads such as relays, solenoids, DC and stepping motors. Two enable inputs are provided to enable o disable independently of the input signals. Hardware Design (5/7)‏ H-Bridge outputs is connected to Shottky diodes allowing the chip to drive inductive load (i.e. DC-brushed gearmotors with Reduction Ratio of 76.84:1 and No Load Speed of 81 RPM).

11. Hardware Design (6/7)‏ The motors have Hall-Effect sensors onboard: each device includes a voltage regulator, quadratic Hall voltage generator, temperature stability circuit, signal amplifier, Schmitt trigger and open collector output on a single silicon chip. Connecting pull-up restistor (4,7 kOhm) at encoder output, we can read pulses with microcontroller. In particular, it measures rotation speed with “Input Capture” interface.

12. To communicate with Embedded System using RS-485 standard, we use MAX485CPA: it’s a transceiver for communication. It contains one receiver and one driver and allow to transmit up to 2.5Mbps. “ENABLE_485” signal permits to select a data direction (transmission or reception) Hardware Design (7/7)‏

13. Software Design if (motor0.on == MOTOR_ON) set_power_pwm0_duty(pwm0) ; else set_power_pwm0_duty(1024);

14. Delay Speed Evaluation Motor 0 Speed Evaluation Motor1 PID_0 PID_1 Speed Evaluation Task Odometry Embedded Command Handler PID Task Odometry Task Handler Command Task Main tasks: –Speed evaluation and control Speed Evaluation Task Pid Task –Calculation of the absolute position of the robot Odometry –Interaction with the outside (RS485) Handler Command Task Sw Design Flow Diagram

15. Components Among all components there are: t_motor_info - (struct) : a data dictionary which is a central location for storing many kinds of data. typedef struct { float current_speed; boolean current_direction; int16 target_speed; boolean on; boolean pid; boolean encoder_enabled; float Kp; / * 'P' proportional gain */ float Ki; / * 'I' integral gain */ float Kd; / * 'D' derivative gain */ } t_motor_info; - Current Speed - Calculated speed coming from Encoders - Current Direction - Actual direction of the motors - Target Speed - New desired speed that has been applied Flags used to activate or disable the respective controls - Boolean on - - Boolean pid - - Boolean Encoder enabled - Constants used in the PID control. - Proportional gain - - Integral gain - - Derivative gain -

16. Software Subsystems Speed Evaluation –Through encoder ticks calculates motors’ speed. (built-in feature of PIC18F2431, called MOTION FEEDBACK MODULE) MOTION FEEDBACK MODULE -Determines the period between two different pulses of the motor encoder. -Uses: a special timer (Timer5) programmed to increment at a frequency of Tclock/8. two input pins (CAP1 & CAP2), connected to the output of the encoders of motor 0 & 1. -Timer5 value is stored in a register: CAPx-BUF. -Encoder Interrupt Service Routine monitors any counter overflow. Delay Speed Evaluation Motor 0 Speed Evaluation Motor1 PID_0 PID_1 Speed Evaluation Task Odometry Embedded Command Handler PID Task Odometry Task Handler Command Task

17. Software Subsystems PID Task –Compares the current speed of a motor to the desired speed to reduce the error through the use of the PID gains. The output of the PID task is directly a value representing the PWM Duty Cycle. 1 float PID_Control(t_motor_info * motorX){ 2 float Error ; 3 float Control_new ; 4 5 Error = motorX->target_speed – motorX->current_speed; 6 if (fabs (Error) < 1.0) 7 Error = 0; 8 –First operation: determination of the error “dead band”: in order to avoid instability in the control (Line 6) Delay Speed Evaluation Motor 0 Speed Evaluation Motor1 PID_0 PID_1 Speed Evaluation Task Odometry Embedded Command Handler PID Task Odometry Task Handler Command Task

18. Software Subsystems –Next steps: integral and derivative terms. 9 // Proporzional term 10 Control_new = motorX->Control_old + (motorX->Kp *Error); 11 12 // Integral term 13 motorX->Sum_G += Error; 14 Control_new += motorX->Ki/SAMPLE_RATE * motorX->Sum_G; 15 16 // Differential term 17 Control_new += (motorX->Kd * SAMPLE_RATE * (Error - motorX->Old_error_G)); 18 19 // Range Control 20 if (Control_new > PID_MAX){ 21 Control_new = PID_MAX; 22 motorX->Sum_G -= Error; 23} 24 else if (Control_new < PID_MIN) { 25 Control_new = PID_MIN; 26 motorX->Sum_G -= Error; 27} 28 // Error 29motorX->Old_error_G = Error; 30motorX->Control_old = Control_new; 31return Control_new; } //Out is already a pwm signal Lines 19-27: Anti-windup Control - Values are maintained in an appropriate range to avoid the saturation condition. - Otherwise system never settles out, but just slowly oscillates around the target position (wind up). Line 10: (motorX->Control_old) -If the error was zero the PID output must only remain constant.

19. Software Subsystems Odometry Task –Determines the absolute position of the robot, in term of x, y and θ. Uses: –two internal timers of the PIC in counting mode: - Timer0 (left wheel) - Timer1 (right wheel). –Some terms with hypothesis that speed value remain constant in every iteration : - L = distance between contact points of wheels and ground. - N = tick number for every complete wheel rotation - W = wheel diameter - D = linear distance covered by a wheel in a tick. - ns = tick number of left wheel - nd = tick number of right wheel Delay Speed Evaluation Motor 0 Speed Evaluation Motor1 PID_0 PID_1 Speed Evaluation Task Odometry Embedded Command Handler PID Task Odometry Task Handler Command Task

20. Software Subsystems General method (Kinematic equations) to evaluate the correct robot’s position and orientation. Supposing that the robot goes in a: –rectilinear motion with linear speed ν –circular motion with angular speed ω Considering a sampling time T s in order to ν and ω remain constant, it’s possible to integrate the equations with Eulero method to obtain: Kinematic Model

21. Software Subsystems Given that velocity ν and ω are evaluated from encoder ticks with equations: The previous formulas become: Important Hardware Problem: –Encoder based on Hall sensors. –Signals affect by a time shift (due to a perturbation provoked by the magnetic field of the motors).

22. Solution: C mpass Aim: to produce a precise number to represent the direction the robot is facing. The compass uses two magnetic field sensors, sensitive to detect the Earths magnetic field, mounted at right angles to each other. compass = read_compass (); #ifdef USE_COMPASS theta = TO_RADIANTS(ceil(compass -compass_zero))+ theta_zero; if (theta > PI) theta = - (2 * PI - theta); if (theta < -PI) theta = 2 * PI + theta; #else theta = theta + (TICK_DISTANCE * (ns-nd))/ WHEEL_DISTANCE; #endif x = x + (TICK_DISTANCE * (ns+nd)*sin(theta))/2; y = y + (TICK_DISTANCE * (ns+nd)*cos(theta))/2; General plan of the code to permit evaluations with or without the compass assistance.

23. Odometry Limits –Requires initialization –Subject to cumulative errors (drift) Systematic –Unequal wheel diameters –Actual diameter different from nominal value –Actual wheelbase different from nominal value –Misaligned wheels –Finite encoder resolution –Finite encoder sampling rate Non-Systematic –Travel over uneven floor –Travel over unexpected objects on floor –Wheel slippage Slippery floor Overacceleration Fast turning Interaction with external bodies Internal forces(castor wheel) Non-point wheel contact with floor Compass Limits –Earth’s magnetic field moves itself in time ( “temporal” declination); –It isn’t direct towards Geographic North ( “area” declination); –It’s deviate by fixed and mobile magnetic materials ( “local” declination and “accidental” declination); –It’s deviate by robot itself (compass’ deviation). Limits The bi-directional square path as a benchmark test

24. Possible Solutions Reduction of odometry Errors –N–No vehicles with a small wheelbase (more prone to orientation errors). –N–No castor wheels (which bear significant portion of weight and are likely to induce slippage). –S–Synchro-drive design provides better odometric accuracy. –T–The wheels should be knife-edge thin and not compressible –A–Auxiliary passive Wheels to reduce encoder errors. –B–Better robot structure. Compass –e–external magnetic fields isolation. –G–Gyroscope uses (difficult for device size).

25. Performance Evaluations Parameter setting for system performance and PID promptness evaluation: –target speed = 80 [tick/time] –initial speed = 0 [tick/time] –Kp = 6 –Ki = 0 –Kd= 0 As figure shows, using only proportional term we have a good time response: