Hardware

CPU Board

The CPU board is running a modified Linux distribution with focus on either low power consumption or real-time application. The CPU board is running on a 1 GHz Cortex A8 processor and has a number of various peripheral circuits handling storage, USB hosts, Ethernet connection and other serial communication interfaces. The CPU board is designed to be used for monitoring and surveillance, but can also be used for less demanding control applications.

DSP Board

The DSP board is running a high performance floating point Digital Signal Processor (DSP), TMS320C6713 from Texas Instrument. The DSP has the ability to perform 1800 MIPS and 1350 MFOPS. The main purpose of the DSP board is to execute control algorithms. Besides the TMS320C6713 processor, the important parts of the DSP board are the A/D and D/A blocks which handle all signal conditioning. That is, handling of input and output impedance, amplification/attenuation and filtering. These blocks need to be adjusted for each application depending on the amount of input signals and output signals, but also the required bandwidth of the application.

Actuator Amplifier

The amplifier is a high voltage (+-150 Vpeak), high current (+-5 A max) amplifier with a bandwidth of 10 Hz-300 kHz specially designed for capacitive loads.

Mechanical Interfaces

Each mechanical interface needs to be specially designed in order to accomplish the desired forces/outputs at appropriate locations and directions. The interface or interfaces will depend very much on which type actuator is being used and also on the constrains of the application.