Industry Summary Articles

MathWorks introduces Motor Control Blockset, an add-on product for Simulink for designing and implementing motor control algorithms. Now, motor control engineers can use reference examples and Simulink blocks for developing field-oriented control algorithms to spin brushless motors. The blockset extends the set of Simulink products for motor control design, enabling engineers to test algorithms with each design change, generate fast and compact ANSI/ISO C code, and use simulation to validate software, reducing certification testing cycles.

“Instead of a process where handwritten code is not verified until actual motor testing, engineers can use simulation and code generation to catch errors earlier and speed up their motor control development projects”

“Instead of a process where handwritten code is not verified until actual motor testing, engineers can use simulation and code generation to catch errors earlier and speed up their motor control development projects,” said Arkadiy Turevskiy, product manager, MathWorks. “Motor Control Blockset strengthens our support for motor control design, where teams report reducing up to 50% of project time when using Simulink to design and implement digital control systems.”

MathWorks is working with motor control hardware providers to develop reference examples that support their motor control kits, starting with several Texas Instruments kits based on their C2000 real-time microcontrollers. Engineers using these kits can automatically estimate motor parameters, generate application code, and spin motors in minutes. Additionally, Motor Control Blockset can be used with Simulink Real-Time and Speedgoat real-time target machines for rapid control prototyping, including field-oriented control autotuning.

Motor Control Blockset includes:
Park, Clarke, space vector modulation, field weakening, maximum torque per amp, and other motor control algorithms optimized for generating fast, compact embedded code

Resolver decoder, Hall sensor decoder, Quadrature encoder decoder, and sliding mode observer for implementing sensored and sensorless motor control

Field-Oriented Control Autotuner block for automatically tuning current and speed loops of field-oriented control architectures

Instrumented tests to estimate motor parameters from experiments with motor hardware

Linear lumped-parameter average-value motor models for verifying control algorithms in closed-loop simulation

Reference applications showing how to quickly spin a motor with several motor control hardware kits

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