Product category:
Microprocessors, Microcontrollers and DSPs
News Release from: Texas Instruments (April 2006-) | Subject: TMS320F28x
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 19 June 2007
Digital signal controller takes charge
under water
Canadian students integrate TI digital signal controller technology into Sonia, their entry for the 10th International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition.
Developing higher performance autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) that are smaller and less complex, Team Sonia, made up of students from the Ecole de Technologie Superieure (ETS) in Quebec, Canada, have integrated TI TMS320F28x digital signal controller (DSC) technology into their new vehicle, which will compete in the 10th International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition in San Diego, from 12th to 15th July 2007 The Sonia autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) will compete in complex tests designed to advance subsurface navigation technology for use in dangerous, difficult and expensive real-world underwater applications
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 29 May 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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"We began development using traditional microcontrollers (MCU), but quickly switched to TI's F28x controllers when we realised we needed a combination of performance, peripherals and integration to create a smaller, more compact AUV that could still pack a punch in terms of performance", says Felix Pageau, Team Leader of Sonia AUV project.
"Thanks to these benefits, plus the flexibility inherent in the controller's programmable digital technology, our overall development was simplified and we were able to vastly reduce the size and complexity of the vehicles' electronics system", says Francis Lauzon-Duranceau, Passive Sonar Project Leader.
The Sonia submersible craft combines a battery, thrusters, onboard computer and other electronics in a compact hull that can be carried by a single person.
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The AUV is equipped with a robotic camera and vision recognition software to detect shapes and colours, active sonar that uses low-frequency pings to detect depth and objects, and passive sonar with hydrophones that detect midfrequency sounds emitted by other objects.
Received sounds are converted to digital acoustic data, which is then triangulated by the 32bit TMS320F2812 controller and used in combination with an internal compass and gyroscope to orient the craft.
150MIPS of DSP-based computational performance allows the F2812 controller to manage all real-time acoustic triangulation, freeing processing headroom in the main computer for visual recognition.
The International AUV Competition is sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) and the US Office of Naval Research (ONR), and was developed to promote the development of systems that use artificial intelligence to perform complex or dangerous underwater tasks with no human intervention or communication such as detecting and disarming underwater mines, performing security and contraband searches in harbours and laying optical fibre on seabeds.
Competition tasks include: locating a docking station in murky water via flashing lights, following pipelines, dropping markers in bins representing pipeline breaks and surfacing over an acoustic beacon.
During the 9th Annual AUV Competition in 2006, Sonia's guidance capabilities and artificial intelligence software enabled the team's craft to complete all tasks within the allowed 15 minutes, securing a finish among the top three contestants.
For the 2007 competition, however, the Sonia team has redesigned the vehicle to feature additional navigation sensors, be more lightweight, more aware of its environment and easier to maintain than previous AUVs.
TI's 32bit TMS320C28x controller platform features up to 150MIPS of performance and an integrated, control-optimised peripheral mix that includes TI's patent-pending high-resolution pulsewidth modulation (HRPWM) technology, with 150ps resolution.
This enhanced resolution allows faster control loops and quicker system response as well as more accurate control systems such as those found in the Sonia AUV.
Among the F2812 device's integrated peripherals are a fast 12.5Msample/s 12bit analogue-to-digital convertor (ADC), timers, data and external memory interfaces, pulsewidth modulation (PWM) and a CAN control bus interface.
In addition, the devices' on-chip memory is available for program and data storage while the controller's industrial characterisation assures reliable operation over the wide temperature ranges that can be found in different underwater environments.
Additionally, the F2812 controller's programmability helped shift the development emphasis from hardware to software - playing to the strength of the team in programming.
The controller's extensive support library and the Code Composer Studio integrated development environment (IDE) simplified writing code and helped save an estimated 50% of program development time.
As the Sonia team continues to improve the AUV's overall design for future contests, they can easily modify the DSP algorithms as needed.
The Sonia AUV also includes TI op amps and voltage regulators.
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