Chapter 1
Introduction to NI-Motion
1-4
ni.com
Figure 1-2 illustrates the physical architecture of the NI motion controller
hardware.
Figure 1-2.
Physical NI Motion Controller Architecture
Tip
Because the NI SoftMotion Controller is not a hardware device, information about
its architecture is not covered in this section. Refer to the
section for information about the functional architecture that is specific to the
NI SoftMotion Controller.
NI Motion Controller Functional Architecture
Functionally, the architecture of the NI 73
xx
motion controllers and the
NI SoftMotion Controller is generally divided into four components:
supervisory control, trajectory generator, control loop, and motion I/O. For
the NI SoftMotion Controller, the motion I/O component is separate from
the controller. Refer to Figure 1-3 and Figure 1-4 for an illustration of how
the components of the 73
xx
and NI SoftMotion Controller interact.
Host Computer
PC
Microprocessor
Running a Real-Time
Operating System
Supervisory/
Communications/
User-defined Onboard
Programs
Digital Signal
Processor (DSP)
Control Loop and
Trajectory Generation
Watchdog
Timer
FPGAs
Encoders and Motion I/O
NI Motion Controller
