As we head to the end of the year, it is often time to look back and reflect on how things have changed. This month, and very close to where I live, leaders from around the world will be doing their own retrospective analysis on how they are progressing towards meeting the climate change goals they had previously set in the Paris Agreement. The COP26 summit is intended to bring parties together to accelerate action towards the goals of that Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. We should all hope that the attendees will be able to form a strict and binding agreement to take us forward.
Towards that goal, in the next few years we’ll be at the point where the first countries will be stopping selling vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. A century of dominance will be coming to an end and we’ll be heading towards a cleaner, greener future. The same thing can be said for manufacturing. A huge amount of the energy we generate goes into driving electric motors – according to some estimates, almost half. Now, we are replacing these motors with cleaner, more efficient alternatives that will provide much more control. How we get to that point is where we will be looking at in this month’s Special Report, which focusses on Motor Drives, Robotics and Control. Power will play a huge part in the move towards more efficient motors. The whole process depends on getting the exact amount of power to the right place at the right time. It is an area where many of the biggest names in the market are targetting because of its potential for high growth.
Our first Special Report article comes from Rohm, and it looks at combating noise. Industrial systems are generally based in electrically noisy areas. When that noise is combined with the noise generated by today’s high component density boards it can create problems if small signals, like those generated by sensors, feed the wrong information to controllers. Countermeasures that prevent circuit malfunctions are difficult to implement and generally need several design/evaluation cycles, rather than simulation that provides an accurate estimate before assembly. Rohm has created a new range of op amps with increased noise immunity that helps create a design with a higher level of protection against noise at the initial design stage.
Our second Special Report article this month comes from Analog Devices. It looks at motor control systems and how their needs for higher accuracy and speed, combined with miniaturization can be met with a high speed, high throughput ADC to accurately capture information and feed motor position data to the controller. These systems are becoming more and more important for applications that need to be housed in smaller enclosures, like for robotics control.
Best Regards,
Ally Winning,
European Editor, PSD
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