Real-Time Control System for Improved Precision and Throughput in an Ultrafast Carbon Fiber Placement Robot Using a SoC FPGA Extended Processing Platform

Abstract

We present an architecture for accelerating the processing and execution of control commands in an ultrafast fiber placement robot. The system consists of a robotic arm designed by Coriolis Composites whose purpose is to move along a surface, on which composite fibers are deposed, via an independently controlled head. In first system implementation, the control commands were sent via Profibus by a PLC, limiting the reaction time and thus the precision of the fiber placement and the maximum throughput. Therefore, a custom real-time solution was imperative in order to ameliorate the performance and to meet the stringent requirements of the target industry (avionics, aeronautical systems). The solution presented in this paper is based on the use of a SoC FPGA processing platform running a real-time operating system (FreeRTOS), which has enabled an improved comamnd retrieval mechanism. The system’s placement precision was improved by a factor of 20 (from 1 mm to 0.05 mm), while the maximum achievable throughput was 1 m/s, compared to the average 30 cm/s provided by the original solution, enabling fabricating more complex and larger pieces in a significant fraction of the time.