An Event-Driven Approach to the Current Control of a BLDC Motor Using FPGA

A mechatronic system consists of a mechanical system and electric actuators. The presented event-driven control of a mechatronic system has been implemented on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) platform. The supervisor provides robust, safe, and transparent control, where the finite-state machine (FSM) defines all the possible directions for implementation. In order to make the supervisor more transparent, the FSM has been divided into three main parts, each signified by a main color (green, yellow, and red - semaphores). These colors indicate the condition of the system. The supervisor has been upgraded with a graphical user interface with indicators that directly show the state of the FSM. The interface includes additional logical I/O signals, in order to make the system more useful. The supervisor is executed parallel to the basic motor control on the FPGA. This paper introduces a robust current controller of a brushless ac (BLAC) motor, upgraded with a proportional-integral velocity controller. The application of the proposed event-condition-action-based method is illustrated using the example of the FSM motion control of a BLAC motor with integrated I/O signals.