A real-time field bus architecture for multi-smart-motor servo system

The multi-motor servo system (MMSS) is an electro-mechanical system widely used in various fields, including electric vehicles, robotics, and industrial machinery. Depending on the application, the number of motors in the system can range from several dozens to tens of thousands, which imposes additional communication demands. Thus, ensuring synchronization and control precision of the system requires addressing the challenge of guaranteeing the performance and reliability of communication among motors in the MMSS. In this paper, we design a smart servo motor (SSM) to upgrade the system to the multi-smart-motor servo system (MSMSS) based on a distributed real-time field bus architecture, namely, Multi-Motor Bus (MMB) architecture. The proposed MMB architecture is lightweight and stable, providing real-time support for Control Area Network connections to a central user computer and inter-integrated circuit connections to SSM units. This MMB architecture facilitates the synchronization of command transmission across SSMs and ensures the consistency of motors in the MSMSS. Additionally, a serial experiments to examine 3 key system performance and reliability characteristics are conducted, including command transmission time, transmission jitters, and rotation consistency. The analysis of these characteristics demonstrates the system’s potential and feasibility to be applicable in industry.