Janus - motion controller software

Janus is an integrated system software for precision motion programming and real-time control. It supports both RS-272 (g-code) and PMAC programming systems. Based on the EtherCAT and real-time kernel (RTAI or Xenomai) technologies, the software-based motion controller can perform feedback control over servo drives only with a few us of jitter at 10kHz frequency. For CNC applications, it includes g-code interpreter, real-time motion planning with look-ahead, and ladder-based PLC. And, for general motion applications, it has PMAC interpreter and online command shell. The enhanced HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) architecture guarantees hard real-time performance and facilitates adding new device and communication support. 

EtherCAT motor drive

For a precision motor drive, we have to cope with challenges in software design: "how to bound the end-to-end delay from message release to motor actuation" and "how to integrate all the control loops so that responsiveness is maximized". Our main contributions are (a) restructuring of drive software into a multi-task model, (b) period synthesis for minimized cycle time, and (c) stochastic analysis of end-to-end delay.