A transputer-based parallel controller for motor control applications

This paper presents the design and implementation of a parallel controller based on the transputers IMS T800-20 for high-performance motor control applications. A unified controller architecture comprising transputer-based parallel computing boards and input/output boards suitable for the real-time control of various types of motor drives is proposed. The system can increase its computing and input/output processing capability by paralleling these boards. A host server based on a personal computer for user interface is also developed. To demonstrate the system's capability, we have applied the system to the fully digital adaptive control of an AC induction servo motor. The control functions can be easily implemented in parallel by using the high-level programming language Occam. The comparison with two existing parallel controllers also shows the performance and architectural features of the system. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.