01 February 2005 Cars and robots are one Develop motion control
solutions over standard networks such as Ethernet By Kendal
Harris, Sivaram Balasubramanian, and Anatoly Moldovansky Current
distributed motion-control systems rely on proprietary
implementations to time synchronize distributed motion
components. With the advent of the Institute of Electrical &
Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 1588, it is possible to develop
motion control solutions over standard networks such as Ethernet
using commercially available technology. Here is the basic
operation of 1588 and motion in a working prototype. Off the
shelf components With the introduction of the IEEE standard
1588, it is now possible, using commercially available
technology, to develop distributed motion control applications
requiring tight synchronization between nodes in the system.
Typically, this requires the jitter between the clocks in the
system to be a few microseconds. Higher performance applications
are increasingly driving this requirement to the sub