In the field of industrial control and automation, the concepts of motor control and motion control are often used interchangeably. People think these concepts are the same as they both are associated with control. But, the fact is both are completely different.
To apply the right solution in industrial automation, you should thoroughly understand the difference between these concepts. You should know when, where, and how to apply these concepts in industrial automation.
In this post, we will discuss the difference between motor control and motion control. But, before that, you should understand the actual meaning of motion control.
Motion control- Simply defined, motion control is a sub-system of an industrial automation system that synchronizes and controls multiple motors to complete a sequence of movements. It is used mainly for trajectory planning, speed planning, interpolation algorithms, and kinematics. Other than this, motion control systems are used in printing, packaging, and assembly applications.
Motor control vs. Motion control
Motion control is mainly concerned with controlling one or more of the torque, speed, and position of a single motor to a given value. On the other hand, motion control coordinates multiple motors to complete the specified motion, focusing more on trajectory planning, speed planning, and kinetics conversion.
Often, motion control is used as a link of the motion control system, focusing more on the control of the motor. The motion control includes position control, speed control, and torque control.
Talking about the use of motion control, it's for products, which include mechanical, software, electrical, and other modules, such as robots, drones, motion platforms, etc. Real-time motion control comes into the picture as the position and speed of the components are controlled in real-time. They are controlled following the expected motion trajectory and prescribed motion parameters.
Some parts of the motor control and motion control overlap. For example, the position, loop, speed loop, or torque loop can be implemented in the drive of the motor or the motion controller. This overlapping confuses people more.
What are the design requirements of motor control and motion control?
Motor control and motion control are different. So, it’s clear that the design requirements or resources for them are quite different as well.
Regarding motor control, it is highly focused on making the motor spin properly and on communication. For this, the motor controller requires an interface with a variety of sensors, processing both analog and digital signals as well as generating waveforms to drive the motor.
About motion control, it acts as a system supervisor that requires communication between multiple motor controllers. It also takes part in some of the motor control tasks. The design of the motion controller depends on the task it is going to take part in.
By now, you might have very well understood that motor control and motion control are different. So, choose the right control solution for industrial automation.
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