Research on reconfigurable robot controller based on ARM and FPGA

Modular reconfigurable robot (MRR) with many modules has the ability to form a large variety of robot configuration. For MRR, it is very difficult to design effective controller due to diverse configurations. In this paper, we propose an architecture of reconfigurable controller of MRR based on Advanced RISC Machine (ARM) processor and Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The ARM processor is used to control motion planning, real-time system status monitoring, sensors data fusion, human-computer interaction and online logic reconfiguration. The FPGA is used to fulfill the tasks related to motion control of MRR, such as motor control, IO control, and sensor data acquisition. The ARM processor and FPGA are connected with internal bus. With the PS mode of FPGA, different control strategy and internal logic of FPGA can be dynamically configured by ARM processor to fit different configuration requirements of MRR. Finally, the result of configuration experiments of MRR shows effectiveness and robustness of the reconfigurable controller.