COVER STORY
Revolutionizing automation: Smart, robust, and safe motor control and sensing solutions
Automation has evolved significantly since the Industrial Revolution, transitioning from basic repetitive task machines to the advanced, flexible, and autonomous systems we see today. As we move towards Industry 5.0, the demand for more sophisticated and adaptable automation solutions is higher than ever, driven by the needs of modern manufacturing and consumer expectations. STMicroelectronics is leading this transformation with innovative solutions in motor control, power management, sensing, and connectivity. Their products are crucial for the development of advanced autonomous material handling machines, which are becoming essential in manufacturing and warehousing due to their efficiency, flexibility, and customizability. In this month’s edition, Andrew Pockson, engineering manager at Anglia, highlights some of
STMicroelectronics’ groundbreaking motor control and sensing solutions, illustrating their benefits and practical applications. Key products include the STSPIN32G4 system-in-package for AGV traction motor control, the STEVAL-ETH001V1 evaluation board for robotic arm control, and a range of industrial MEMS sensors like the ISM330DHCX IMU and the VL53L4CD Time-Of-Flight sensor.
Automation trends
A major trend in automation is the proliferation of material handling autonomous machines, namely Autonomous Ground Vehicles (AGV) and Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR). The advantage of AGV and AMRs is their flexibility and ability to be customised to suit specific applications, they can be broadly split into 3 form factors. Mouse – Automated guided carts designed to move materials, these low-profile carts manoeuvre under the materials and can transport weight capacities of several hundred or thousands of Kgs. Tugger – As the name suggests, these machines are designed to automatically tow loads within a manufacturing or warehouse facility. Forklift – Automated forklifts designed for excellent efficiency gains in monotonous and repetitive logistics tasks.
Fig. 1
Robotics can also be combined with these form factors creating even more sophisticated customisable solutions as shown in Figure 1.
AGV/AMRs have some common requirements, they need to be efficient for maximum up time because they are powered by rechargeable batteries, robust and powerful to handle varied and heavy loads, intelligent and adaptable to meet requirements of modern manufacturing sites and last but not least, safe so they can operate in environments with obstacles, other machines and personnel.
The example used in Figure 1 can be used to demonstrate some of the key requirements of a typical AGV/AMR system. The mouse element requires traction motor control, a battery management solution (BMS) to control energy delivery and charging for the onboard battery pack and an array of sensors for detecting obstacles and dangers when it is in motion.
The robotic deck requires differing levels of precision motor control for the main robotic arm, secondary link arm and manipulator mechanism. Of course, the robotic arm moves so it will also require an array of sensors to precisely detect its position, motor current and speed as well as proximity sensing for safety and obstacle detection.
Motor control
STMicroelectronics have a strong line up of motor control solutions from their rich history in industrial and automotive applications.
The STSPIN32G4 system-in-package is a high performance three-phase motor controller with embedded STM32G431 Arm Cortex-M4 MCU+FPU, triple half-bridge gate driver & associated bootstrap diodes and can drive power MOSFETs with a current capability of 1 A (sink and source), ideal for traction motor control in AGVs. Compatible with motor supply voltages from 5.5V to 75V, the STSPIN32G4 features a CORDIC mathematical hardware accelerator for trigonometric functions and can be self-supplied thanks to the onboard buck converter and LDO linear regulator. The motor controller
10 July/August 2024 Components in Electronics
www.cieonline.co.uk
has a full set of interfaces, I2C, SPI, UART and CAN and has digital hall sensor and quadrature encoder inputs. A suite of demonstration boards is also available, the EVSPIN32G4 family of evaluation boards help designers quickly evaluate the performance and feature set of the STSPIN32G4 system-in-package motor controller. For precision control applications such as robotic arms STMicroelectronics have developed the STEVAL-ETH001V1 evaluation board which provides a complete servo drive solution for multiaxial position control with real time Ethernet connectivity.
The evaluation board features a STM32F767 high- performance, Arm Cortex- M7 MCU with DSP & FPU combined with a three-phase motor drive inverter based around the STDRIVE101 triple half-bridge gate driver and
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