DSP Control Group, Inc. was founded by a group of scientists specializing in various areas of Motion Control, Medical, Neural Network and Digital Signal Processing. The company has been intensely involved in the development of DSP-based control chips and boards serving the medical, general automation and machine tool markets. The founders of DSPCG carry many years of academic research and industrial experience in: DSP and ASIC gate array design, theory of optimum control, and the application of Kalman filtering in motion systems.

Dr. Sy Meshkat, the company's president, has many years of experience as a professor of Electronic Engineering, Director of Advanced Technology at Electrocraft Corporation and consultant with the DSP division of Texas Instruments. He has designed and taught Texas Instruments DSP Control Workshops nationally. Dr. Meshkat has published well over 100 technical articles and authored three books in various motion control areas. His recent publication DSPs in Motion Control is being taught by Texas Instruments DSP Control workshops. He holds numerous patents in the areas of multi-processing parallel DSP motion controller design, Robust motion controller design and, Current synthesis in motion control drive systems. The company has worked with Texas Instrument as a third party since 1990s.

Technological Advantage
Drawing on the scientific background of its founders, the company offers the fastest and most advanced controllers on the market. This was confirmed by a comprehensive study performed by the Oak Ridge National Labs/ Martin Marietta on Evaluation of Mx4 in Advanced Machine Tool Accuracy Compensation. The evaluation was completed in July of 1994 and the resulting report is available by Oak Ridge National Labs Y12 Plant. To date, Mx4 is the only multi-DSP controller on the market with the computation speed about ten times faster than all competing products. This is the result of using four DSPs in a hyper-cube hardware architecture. Other unique features include Kalman filter, programmable Notch for resonance cancellation, state feedback control, Vector control, programmable motor technology and PWM frequency. DSPL as a powerful control language is supported by a compiler for ease of programming and troubleshooting. The compiler results in an optimized and fast executing code consistent with the nature of the devices (DSPs) on which it will execute.

Installations and Applications
DSPCG is proud to announce that only five years after the installation of the first Mx4, over 40000 multi-axis Mx4s operate in three-shift operations around the world. Applications served include: military telescope, radar positioning, machine tools, CNC, robotics, laser imaging, semiconductor handling, IC wire bonding, packaging, textile, etc.

Open Architecture
Open architecture means independence from a single source supplier of "total system". The Mx4 controller is the world's first fully digital open system that is configurable to all industrial motors, power switches and sensors. This product allows real-time implementation of computer control strategies required for servo control of brush-type DC, brushless DC, AC induction and variable (switched) reluctance motors. An Mx4 controller can be configured for any motor with a single command. Furthermore, drive parameters such as Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) output frequency, current limit and current gains are also configurable via real-time commands. The Mx4 controller interfaces with all commutation and incremental encoder sensors and allows the user to determine the number of motor magnetic poles for each axis. High-speed parallel processing allows for a more compact implementation of the control instructions for multiple motors. Each Mx4 instruction allows multiple axes to be programmed with only a single line command. The advantages offered by such flexibility open the door to a new era for motion computer control. For the OEM application, this flexibility enables the engineer to upgrade any part of a subsystem when such an upgrade is economically feasible. For example, the OEM engineer may select a brushless DC Motor (a relatively expensive choice) and finish the system design. Later, the engineer can replace the brushless DC motor with an AC induction motor without changing the hardware. That is, motor replacement does not require a change in power stage, power supply, or control electronics. The corresponding software change for motor replacement is only one line as follows:

Before:
motor_tech( 2, brushless_dc ); motor 2 is brushless

After:
motor_tech( 2, ac_ind ); motor 2 is ac induction

The flexibility afforded by the Mx4 speeds up the product development time by allowing the engineers to make a final economical decision later, when they learn more about their application needs without major changes in software or hardware.

Multimedia Tutorials
The interactive multimedia tutorials allow the users of a DSPCG product to learn about various features of the product and its programming methods. The tutorials cover hardware architecture, system connections, DSPL programming and object-oriented programming using Visual Basic and C++ programming techniques. Multimedia Manuals In addition, the CD ROM contains Hypertext manuals through which information may be found per user's preferred method of categorization. For example, the user may pose a hardware question by typing in the connector name or the system function in which that connector is used. Accordingly, the user may find the information on a desired software feature by specifying the application category, function category or simply typing the command name itself.

DSP Control Group, Inc.

4445 West 77th Street
Minneapolis, MN 55435
Phone: (952) 831-9556
Fax: (952) 831-4697
info@dspcg.com