Abstract
Customers have always been increasing their desires of the capability of products and machinery. They want improved productivity and efficiency. The demands and requirements often focus on extentions of functionallity, faster response, operation capability, man-machine interface, robustness, reliability and safety in use. Today's information technology can offer both software and hardware for the engineering solutions which could satisfy such demands, requirements and regulations. This paper deals with how transputers can be applied for fast controllers for hydraulic actuator systems. A general Transputer-based Control System including a Data Acquisition Transputer Subsystem is presented. As an application case a developed mechatronic test facility consisting of a fast hydraulic robot with the Transputer-based Control System is presented. Some experimental path-tracking results with adaptive control algorithms are presented and discussed. The results confirm that transputers have significant advantages for intelligent control of actuator systems and robots for high speed and precision tasks.
