Ph.D. in philosophy is held by Maurizio Di Paolo Emilio. D. in Physics and is a Telecommunications Engineer. In addition to designing thermal compensation systems (TCS) and data acquisition and control systems, he has worked on numerous international projects involving gravitational wave research. He has also collaborated with Columbia University on projects involving x-ray microbeams, high voltage systems, and space technologies for communications and motor control. The Virgo and LIGO experiments, which made the first detection of gravitational waves and won the 2017 Nobel Prize, have used TCS. He has been a reviewer for academic journals like Microelectronics Journal and IEEE journals since 2007. Additionally, as a technical writer/editor with a focus on various electronics and technology topics, he has worked with various electronic industry companies as well as several Italian and English blogs and magazines, including Electronics World, Elektor, Mouser, Automazione Industriale, Electronic Design, All About Circuits, Fare Elettronica, Elettronica Oggi, and PCB Magazine.
He served as the chief editor of the technical blogs and magazines for the electronics sector Firmware and Elettronica Open Source from 2015 to 2018. He took part in numerous conferences as a keynote speaker on a variety of subjects, including x-ray, space technologies, and power supplies. Power Electronics, Wide Bandgap Semiconductors, Automotive, IoT, Embedded, Energy, and Quantum Computing are some of the topics Maurizio likes to write and share tales about. Since 2019, Maurizio has worked as a content editor for AspenCore. He currently serves as editor-in-chief of Power Electronics News, EEWeb, and EE Times' correspondent. He is the host of PowerUP, a podcast about power electronics, as well as the promoter and planner of the PowerUP Virtual Conference, a summit where eminent speakers discuss the latest developments in power electronics design every year. He also contributed to a number of technical and scientific articles and two Springer books on data acquisition and control systems and energy harvesting.
Robots are becoming more intelligent. Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) can now independently perform extremely difficult tasks like moving, grasping, and positioning objects because of the significant advancements made in the field of artificial vision as well as the availability of more sophisticated sensors and control algorithms.
The increased autonomy and mobility of robots today have a variety of uses in the industrial automation of the automotive and manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, and transportation sectors.
Involved technologies like motion, machine vision, autonomous navigation, sensing, and connectivity are becoming more prevalent as these robots become smarter and better able to interact and collaborate with humans.
In comparison to brushed motors, BLDC motors have a number of benefits, including high reliability, low maintenance requirements, and high efficiency. Complex algorithms and the right driver are needed for their control, though. The majority of three-phase BLDC motors, which are frequently used in robotics and other demanding applications, are powered by power transistors whose transition from the on to the off state is controlled by a pulse-width-modulation (PWM) signal.
A dedicated microcontroller (MCU) that implements the desired control algorithm is necessary if the motor controller is not fully integrated (the control algorithm is built into the device). Utilizing topologies like half-bridge or others, three-phase BLDC motors are driven by power MOSFETs made of silicon or wide-bandgap materials like SiC and GaN.
AMRs require a variety of sensors in order to gather pertinent data about the environment in which they operate and interact with it. Image, LiDAR, temperature, and rotation sensors are examples of common sensors. Currently, the majority of these sensors are produced using solid-state technology, which offers high reliability, low cost, and consistent performance over time.
Of course, a robot also requires a power source, and for it to function fully autonomously, it also needs to be battery-powered. Thus, a variety of devices, including battery chargers, current and battery monitoring devices, load switches, and DC/DC converters, are required.
Concept of onsemi AMR.
The Onsemi AMR concept is a comprehensive robotics solution built using state-of-the-art proprietary technology. The idea can be used to create various kinds of robots, cobots, power tools, and autonomous guided vehicles by combining various intelligence and power solutions from Onsemi.
All of the essential elements depicted in Figure 1 are covered by Onsemi's solutions, which also include pertinent applications like industrial cobots and robots, warehouse robots, delivery robots, power tools, agricultural robots, lawn mowers, and autonomous guided vehicles.
Onsemi's particular solutions are highlighted in a block diagram of the AMR concept (top view) in Figure 2. In the paragraphs that follow, these solutions will be discussed.
controlling a BLDC motor.
The following are the primary BLDC motor control options that onsemi provides.
ECS640A is the ecoSpin Motor Dev Kit.
UCB stands for Universal Controller Board.
Gate controller NCP81075.
Board with three-phase MOSFET BLDC power.
The ECS640A is a three-phase BLDC motor controller with an ultra-low-power optimized ARM Cortex-M0 MCU, three sense amplifiers, a reference amplifier (NCS20034), three bootstrap diodes, and a high-voltage gate driver created for high-voltage, high-speed operation, with the ability to drive MOSFETs and IGBTs operating up to 600 V (FAN73896). Six gate-driver outputs offer a 350 mA/650 mA (typical) sink/source. gate current to outside power sources. To support sensored or sensorless operation, the device has Hall sensor inputs. One or more shunts can be measured using the three independent low-side source pins.
High-end control and artificial intelligence applications are well suited for the UCB, a system-on-module based on the Xilinx Zynq-7000 SoC. The module combines CPU, DSP, ASSP, and mixed-signal functionality on a single device, enabling key analytics and hardware acceleration. It does this by combining the software programmability of a dual ARM Cortex-A9 MP core with the hardware programmability of an FPGA. The UCB is designed to load the FPGA bit stream and MCU code upon power from the SD card when available, or from the QSPI flash otherwise. It comes with 2 256 MB of DDR3 system memory and two options for nonvolatile storage (QSPI flash and microSD card). The Motor Development Kit (MDK), one of the onsemi's development platforms, is made possible by the UCB.
A high-performance dual-MOSFET (high side and low side) gate-drive IC, the NCP81075 is made for driving MOSFETs at high voltages and speeds up to 180 V. The NCP81075 integrates a driver IC and a bootstrap diode and provides drive capability up to 4 A. With a matched typical propagation delay of 3 point 5 ns, the high-side and low-side drivers are independently controlled.
The MOSFET power boards are a set of four boards that are intended to drive three-phase BLDC motors that operate at low and medium voltages and have a power range of 600 W to 1.2 kW. Six single N-channel power MOSFETs for the inverter stage are present on each board, along with a PWM synchronous buck converter for power conversion, and all boards are UCB compatible.
Sensors.
The AR0234CS image sensor and the NCS32100 inductive rotary position sensor are two of Onsemi's sensor options for autonomous mobile robots.
A 1/2.6-inch 2-MP CMOS digital image sensor with an active pixel array of 1,920 (H) 1,200 (V), the AR0234CS measures pixels. It uses a brand-new, cutting-edge global shutter pixel design that is geared toward precise, quick, and full-resolution 120 fps capture of moving scenes. In both bright and low-light conditions, the sensor generates crisp, low-noise images.
When used in conjunction with a printed-circuit-board sensor, the NCS32100 provides a full-featured controller and sensor interface for high-resolution, high-accuracy angular sensing. The NCS32100 offers a variety of digital output formats and has flexible configuration capabilities that enable connection to a range of inductive sensor patterns.
These are this sensor's main features:
high accuracy (better than 50 arcsec).
up to 6,000 RPM with complete accuracy.
high speed (up to 100,000 RPM).
different options for sensor diameter.
Low price.
even when not moving, position data.
Compared to conventional position sensor solutions, inductive sensing techniques have some distinct advantages, including but not limited to temperature insensitivity, mechanical simplicity, and insensitivity to contaminants. Moreover, Onsemi has 20 years of experience with inductive sensors for the automotive industry.
Powerful remedies.
A power supply unit that can convert the input AC to the necessary 48-VDC output voltage, as well as DC/DC converters, are necessary for autonomous mobile robots to charge their batteries. Using the NCP1632 and NCP1399 components from onsemi, a 48-V, 600-W PSU can be created. An interleaved power-factor controller, appropriate for use in the PFC stage implementation, is the first. The second is an integrated high-voltage driver current-mode resonant controller (LLC). Input main rails for this solution are 48 V, 0-12.5 A for the main rail and 5 V, 0-2 A for the secondary rail.
An example of a synchronous PWM buck regulator for DC/DC conversion is the FAN65008B. The device has integrated high-side and low-side power MOSFETs, a fixed-frequency voltage-mode PWM controller, and can manage continuous currents up to 10 A over a wide voltage range (4.5-65 V).
Illumination options.
The NVC7685 LED linear current driver-based automotive tail LED light kit offers a great AMR lighting solution. The NCV7685 supports 128 distinct duty-cycle levels, adjustable using PWM separately for each output channel, and is programmable via an I2C serial interface. It has 12 linearly programmable constant-current sources with a common reference. Either a MCU or standalone applications can use the device.
The NCL31000 from Onsemi is an intelligent LED driver designed for luminaire applications. It has capabilities for indoor positioning and visible light communication. A high-efficiency buck LED driver that supports both high-bandwidth analog and PWM dimming down to zero current is included, along with two auxiliary DC/DC converters and diagnostics to measure input and output current and voltage, LED temperature, and DC/DC voltages.
Communications strategies.
The AMR platform can communicate with the environment by using the telemetry sensor node, which is based on the RLS10 wireless RF transceiver. The industry's lowest-power Bluetooth Low Energy MCU can be easily added to wireless applications with the RLS10, a Bluetooth 5.2-certified transceiver. While maximizing system size and battery life, RSL10 enables advanced wireless features. The dual-core architecture and 2.4-GHz transceiver of the highly integrated radio SoC give it the flexibility to support both Bluetooth Low Energy and 2.4-GHz custom protocols.
The NCN26010 10Base T1S Industrial Ethernet is an additional option for enabling communication. It offers multi-drop Ethernet communication for industrial applications using existing twisted-pair wire infrastructure. The NCN26010 device is an IEEE 802.3cg-compliant Ethernet transceiver designed for industrial multi-drop Ethernet that includes a media access controller (MAC), a PLCA reconciliation sublayer, and a 10BASE-T1S PHY. For data transmission and reception over a single unshielded twisted pair, it offers all physical layer functions required. The Open Alliance MAC-PHY SPI protocol is used by NCN26010 to communicate with host MCUs.
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