2 SYSTEM OVERVIEW
2 System Overview
The robot controller described here is part of a robot system that consists of four basic components:
1. Robot: the mechanical robot arm
2. Robot control: modular robot controller consisting of embedded computer, motor driver mod-
ules for controlling the robot axes and IO modules.
3. Robot control software: Control software for moving the robot and executing robot programs.
4. Programming environment: Graphical software for setting up robot programs
The robot controller is used to control the movement of the robot’s motors. The robot controllers
are available with 48V motor voltage or 24V motor voltage. The stepper motor driver modules are for
bipolar stepper motors of different sizes and configurable, or preconfigured. For precise positioning
and control, quadrature encoder signals are normally read in, which feed back the actual motor or
axis position to the stepper motor driver modules. In addition, different referencing methods and
movements are supported to transmit the "actual position" of the robot to the software after a cold
start of the robot system. Different inverse kinematics are supported in the software, so that e.g.
controlled linear movements of a robot arm are as easy to program as those of a gantry robot.
2.1 Specifications
Modular Control Feature
Power supply 24V
Type DIN rail modules with 5-pole bus connector
Communication with PC/PLC CRI or Modbus via Ethernet
Internal communication CAN
Joint modules Closed Loop motor modules
absolute encoder
integrated brake
Digital IO module in the base: 4 digital inputs
in the robot arm: digital 2 inputs and outputs
solid state relay, max 500 mA
Table 2: Modular Robot Control - Components
The features of the embedded control can be seen in the table 3.
Embedded control Features
Type Single board computer with daughter module
Operating system Linux based
Software TinyCtrl robot control software
Interfaces CAN Bus (connection to the modules)
Ethernet (connection to Windows PC)
USB
©2022 igus® GmbH 6
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