Development of electric drive software for coordinated control in electromechanical system

Background. To operate multi-coordinate electromechanical systems require control of electric drives coordinated in time and space along each of the axes, which is called coordinated control. Thus, various computing tools and mathematical algorithms are used. They establish the baseline of the software for microprocessor control systems. At the same time, the implementation of control algorithms is limited by the computing resources of the hardware parts of control systems, including the limitations of the tools of information transmission. To consider and eliminate these limitations and thus, to improve operation of the multi-coordinate electromechanical system, the aim of the article is to update control algorithms and balance distribution of computational resources of electric drives control systems. Materials and methods. Data are presented on the software development for coordinated control of several electric drives as a part of an electromechanical system that performs coordinated motion along its axes in time and space. To synchronize the control, the following technical solutions have been applied: description of the path of the high-level controller in the form of a sequence of reference points, buffering the coordinates when received by the electric drives and subsequent interpolation. Balanced distribution of resources between the high-level controller and local systems of electric drives is carried out considering the intensity of data exchange via the network interface. When calculating the reference points by the high-level controller, approximation of the paths by line segments at time intervals of variable duration is carried out to describe the generic path within the allowable mismatch. Results. The algorithm to synchronize the system time of the electric drives and the high-level controller has been implemented to synchronize the interpolation of paths. To implement this algorithm and transfer the coordinates of reference points to electric drives, special commands are used. They have different priority levels depending on the required speed of execution. In accordance with this algorithm, software has been developed as an element of the microprocessor control system of the electric drive. Conclusions. Application of various technical tools and computational algorithms that make it possible to allocate the computing resources of the control system and rationally use them contributes to efficiency improvement, in particular, the consistency and timeliness of electric drives control as a part of multi-axis electromechanical systems. The authors have proved the efficiency of the approach of coordinated control with the use of buffering coordinates of reference points followed by interpolation of the paths depending on the system time of each of the electric drives.