Integrated MotionSynapticon provides a comprehensive, world-leading portfolio of technologies and products in the area of industrial motion control. Being the only software-first servo drive company, Synapticon sees servo drives as the gateways between the virtual and the real world. It’s sensors and drives that turn a computer into a robot. Based on key proprietary technologies, Synapticon offers the most compact, fully self-contained, most efficient and easy-to-use performance servo drives for decentral system architectures and unparalleled solutions for the integration of drives inside motion axes.
Synapticon SOMANET Motion Cores are based on xCore and ARM processor architectures and offer 8 to 32 programmable 32bit RISC cores per chip, which communicate through a high-speed real-time processor bus. This highly parallel, hard real-time architecture, is the foundation of Synapticon’s superior control performance and SOMANET products’ advanced features.
Synapticon‘s proprietary Model-Predictive Deadbeat Field-Oriented Control (MPD Control) technology helps to increase the efficiency and therefore reduce the heat dissipation of Synapticon servo drives substantially. It uses an advanced model of power electronics, motor, reduction and load in order to reach the control target within 1.X switching cycles. Traditional current controllers need several switching cycles to reach a desired target, respectively dissipating much more heat at the same control performance level.
Synapticon is pushing the envelope of mixed signal integration and high-density-interconnect (HDI) technology common in smartphone design and combines it with decades of experience in power stage design, to come up with ultra-compacts servo drive designs that smartly manage heat dissipation and still allow for frameless EMC certification. “Real” power density is what we call a device, that provides all the functionality required and high performance specs in a realistic thermal integration situation.
Based on explicit and classical statistical methods, as well as AI approaches, Synapticon’s algorithms for disturbance rejection in sensors, motors and gearboxes help overcome quality influencing physical characteristics such as cogging torque, stick-slip characteristics and backlash. As a result, systems can reach higher performance using lower cost components – enabled by software.
The best technology is only as good as the extent to which it can be used. Synapticon pays respectively high attention to the ease of use of its application software tools and provides autotuning algorithms for most control features.
Synapticon unleashes the power of integration. Discrete components such as separate servo drive, position feedback sensors, safety functions and brakes, automatically come with overhead in size and cost, since mechanical and electrical interfaces need to ensure compatibility among a broad range of mating devices. What is more, the interaction between the devices is limited. Position encoders integrated in the servo drive not only significantly save space and reduce cost: Access to more data based on the direct interfacing of sensor read head and servo drive CPU allows for new possibilities in calibration, letting low-cost encoder technology provide high-end performance.
Certified functional safety components are traditionally boosting system cost. We took the challenge to break this economic law by means of decentralization, integration and digitalization: Synapticon’s software and hardware architecture allows for modular safety features and a certification process that is independent of firmware modifications. From the integrated safe position sensor via torque sensing to the very drive shaft, this allows for a much quicker process from the definition of new features to the certificate. Integrated Motion Devices for decentral application now contain safety features commonly only found in advanced safety PLCs, consolidating the complexity of many safety systems substantially. Imagine AGV/AMR wheels that invisibly contain everything the mobile system needs to safely drive the vehicle. Cobots that are fully certified compliant. Possible with Synapticon Safe Motion.
Gearboxes are still the most expensive components in performance motion control axes, such as industrial robot joints. They’re also the most mechanical component of any motion axis. Robustness, reliability and precision today are essentially gained by means of production effort. Optimized for decades, there is little hope that leap improvements can be reached without substantially questioning existing technology and thinking outside the box. Enter the point where Synapticon’s interdisciplinary capabilities, connecting the worlds of software, electronics and mechanics are coming to their full effect. Synapticon’s Digital Gearbox Control technology is redefining the fundamental composition of motion axes, enabling to control parameters dynamically that have been static to date. Stay tuned.
