Direct command generation for CNC machinery based on data compression techniques

This paper presents a direct command generation technique for digital motion control systems. In this paradigm, higher-order differences of a given trajectory (i.e. position) are calculated and the resulting sequence is compacted via data compression techniques. The overall method is capable of generating trajectory data at variable rates in forward- and reverse-directions with the utilization of a linear interpolator. As a part of the command generation scheme, the paper also proposes a new data compression technique titled Delta Y10. Apart from this new method, the performances of the proposed generator employing different compression algorithms (such as Huffman coding, Arithmetic coding, LZW, and run length encoding) are also evaluated through three test cases. The paper illustrates that the Delta Y10 technique, which is suitable for real-time hardware implementation, exhibits satisfactory performance in terms of data compaction achieved in the test cases considered. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.