A relatively new category of IC called an Intelligent Motor Controller (IMC) has been gaining the attention of machine controls designers. IMCs are dedicated ICs that provide intelligent control of multi phase motors such as Brushless DC and AC Induction motors. IMCs are generally designed to interface with on-card microprocessors, and perform motor functions such as initialization, commutation, field oriented control, and error detection. They interface with standard MOSFET and IGBT control circuitry, and greatly simplify the task of developing a high performance, high efficiency motor drive.

For "Intelligent Controllers", see the Product Design & Development article (left).

-Learn about chip-based motion controllers-

In this article you will get an overview of PID (proportional, integral, derivative) based servo loops, and an introduction to two standard manual tuning methods that work well for a large variety of systems. You'll also learn about the increasingly popular technique of auto-tuning as well advanced servo techniques such as feedforward and frequency domain bi-quad filtering.

For more information on Tuning Servomotors, click here.