New Industry Products

Achieve Improved Motion and Efficiency for Advanced Motor-Control Designs in Minutes

April 17, 2013 by Jeff Shepard

InstaSPIN-MOTION from Texas Instruments, Incorporated, is a comprehensive torque-, speed- and motion- control software solution that delivers robust system performance at the highest efficiency for motor applications that operate in various motion state transitions. Built upon TI’s InstaSPIN™-FOC motor control solution, InstaSPIN-MOTION is uniquely designed to optimize complex motion sequences, reduce tuning to a single parameter and tracking desired trajectories with unmatched accuracy across operating ranges. It constitutes the easiest and most effective method for achieving optimized sensorless motor control.

TI’s InstaSPIN-FOC solution, which was announced earlier this year, takes advantage of the FAST™ premium software sensor for rotor flux measurement and provides motor identification, automatic current control tuning and sensorless feedback in a field-oriented control (FOC) torque controller and speeds deployment of efficient, sensorless, variable load three-phase motor solutions.

Adding additional motor control functionality, InstaSPIN-MOTION enables more expertise on chip. With the core algorithms embedded in the read-only-memory (ROM) on TI’s 32-bit C2000™ Piccolo™ microcontrollers (MCUs), InstaSPIN-MOTION integrates SpinTAC™ components from LineStream Technologies, featuring optimized motion profiling, single-parameter tuning and a disturbance-rejecting controller, which speeds development and increases performance across changing speeds and loads. InstaSPIN-MOTION can be used with sensored feedback or with the included sensorless InstaSPIN-FOC solution.

InstaSPIN-MOTION removes the need for inefficient, older design techniques. For example, defining the motor’s desired motion in other methods requires simplistic, inflexible trajectories, resulting in mechanical stress. Hand-coded, calculation-heavy trajectories consume valuable memory. Likewise, achieving desired motor performance across varying conditions requires multiple sets of multi-parameter, proportional-integral (PI) controllers needing time-intensive tuning.

InstaSPIN-MOTION’s SpinTAC™ components include: IDENTIFY: Ensure optimum tracking and disturbance rejection, working with the real inertia of the system. CONTROL: Minimize effort and reduce complexity with single coefficient tuning. Rapidly test and tune velocity control from soft to stiff response, defining a controller gain that typically works across the entire variable speed and load range of an application. Actively estimate and cancel system disturbances in real time, providing maximum performance. MOVE: Produce an automatically optimized motion profile based on start velocity, target velocity and system limitations for acceleration, jerk and motion trajectory type. PLAN: Quickly build various states of motion (speed A to speed B) and tie them together with state-based logic.

InstaSPIN-MOTION is available today on the production-ready, 90 MHz, 32-bit floating point Piccolo F2806xM microcontrollers starting at $10.22 in production volumes. Designers can begin their latest InstaSPIN-MOTION motor designs with a low-voltage, low-current motor control kit for $299 (DRV8312-69M-KIT), low-voltage, high-current motor control kit for $299 (DRV8301-69M-KIT) or high-voltage motor control kit for $699 (TMDSHVMTRINSPIN). If designers have a previously purchased a TI motor control development kit, they can order the modular InstaSPIN-MOTION-enabled Piccolo controlCARD for $99 (TMDSCNCD28069MISO).