Question Convert 6dof Stewart platform to SimTools

Hi guys!

I have gotten the opportunity to take over a 6dof motion platform that has been standing in a corner collecting dust for a few years now.



Obviously I am very excited, but a bit worried that I have gotten in over my head.
It has been working, but now there is noone with insight in the arduino code or Simulink model that comes with it.
My idea is to convert it for using with SimTools instead.
It has 6 SKF CAT33H linear actuators with encoders (incremental I assume) and one ESCON maxon motor controller per actuator. It has one Arduino Mega with an Ethernet shield and another plain Arduino Mega. The one with the ETH controls the motor controllers and communicates with the server and the other Arduino Mega handles all the encoders.

I have been on here searching for similar solutions, but can't really find any. I can absolutely change the Megas to something faster or change other components if needed.

SO, I'm reaching out to you experienced people;
- Would you say its a possible project for a non-programmer enthusiast?

I assume these are brushless motors... perhaps you can use odrive...

I think the motor controllers will work fine. They are DC motors.

The main issue is the Arduino code I guess.

What motor drivers does it use ?

To my current knowledge, it just needs a PWM signal and direction from the Arduino.

Its actually an ESC controller, for brushless motors or 4-quadrant PWM servo controller for permanent magnet-activated brushed DC motors, meaning these motors have four poles, not two poles that DC motors have.

https://www.maxongroup.com/maxon/view/product/control/4-Q-Servokontroller/409510

See some info on these four quadrant type servo motors:
https://circuitglobe.com/four-quadrant-operation-of-dc-motor.html

Use 3 arduinos and the smc3 program to control

But these actuators use encoders, not pots. Do you know of any arduino sketch that has that?

I may have salvaged the old Arduino code that is in the megas right now. I'll look in there how they are controlled.

I'll look this up though, thanks! A new concept for me. I will contact SKF (Ewellix nowadays) for some more info on these actuators.

I now have the code, and the actuators are just controlled with PWM, CW, CCW and ENABLE. It is not obvious to me how I would convert this to SMC3 type arduinos though..

Yeah, all good, but you still need position feedback sensor for the smc3 control loop.

here is an example of pid using an encoder



sketch here -- https://github.com/XRobots/Actuator_Linear


the guy in the video is awesome used to be a toy designer

loads of info on encoder counting here


https://playground.arduino.cc/Main/RotaryEncoders/

it my be possible to use your existing code to work with simtools

explain how the current system works

can we take a look at the code ?

what make is the sim ? is there a story with it ?

Yeah, exactly. Replacing the pots in the smc3 with encoder values seems challenging.

Maybe one could map the encoder position integer to just replace the pot value... Sounds like a dirty workaround though..

I'll have to see if I can get some help with looking through the code for possible solutions.

It was made at my univeristy as a Bachelors thesis about 6 or 7 years ago, and has been standing still since they finished.
It has one Arduino Mega that communicates via ethernet with a server running SimuLink. I think the Simulink model got data from the simulator "Racer" (Now Crudens Panthera) and ran it through a vahicle model and then sent data back to the Arduino for controlling the actuators.
Another Arduino Mega reads the encoders and sends the data through serial to the first Mega. That sketch is quite compact and uses the encoder.h library.
The ethernet connected Mega's code looks more complex obviously.

The sim is scratch built, without much documentation.
During the process they had a lot of contact with Cruden and my university ended up buying a HexaTech motion rig from them. Needless to say, it outperformed this one. Thats why it ended up in a corner, but now I want to adopt it. <3

I'm not really comfortable sharing the code, since it is not really mine and I don't know who to ask permission from.
Maybe I could set up a Zoom or Teams meeting, and share screen so you could take a look at it?
I know it's a lot to ask, and I will take no offense if that request is completely ignored

what you have may already work with sim tools !

can you find out the format of the data that is transmitted

it may be like this

[Axis1][Axis2][Axis3][Axis4][Axis5][Axis6]

It contains a bunch of matrices. A few for the motor controls and some for sending encoder data over UDP.

What looks like actuator position;

Code:

    Serial2.readBytes(pos,encElements);
    Udp.beginPacket(remIP, remPort);
    for( int i = 0; i < encElements; i++){
      posOut = pos[i];
      Udp.write(posOut);
 

And one "status" that seems to contain something important too;

Code:

if(Udp.parsePacket())
  {
    bitSet(Status,RecieveUDP);
    Udp.read(packetBuffer,UDP_TX_PACKET_MAX_SIZE);
 

The code does not seem to contain any PID regulation though. Would that be an issue?

pid may not be a problem

the actuator may just drive to its new position as fast as possible

The PID position loop is calculated on another "software" on the PC, not in the microcontrollers, unless you have that software, then the microcontrollers are kind of handicapped.