ATS happily collaborates in applied research in Flanders. The engineering faculties of Ghent University and the University of Antwerp have a strong tradition in technology transfer between universities and industry. Hence, our collaboration on motion control tuning in the TETRA-project OPTIMOTION (Ghent University, University of Antwerp & Flanders Make) and OPTIFLEX (Ghent University, University of Antwerp & KULeuven) became very natural.

Control engineering workshop during the Tetra project Optiflex @ University of Antwerp

In particular, five ATS project engineers participated in workshops organised at the University of Antwerp. This allowed us to include several user-friendly tools developed at the University in our workflow. A major change is the use of a convenient Excel-based tool for frequency analysis on drivelines. This tool and related knowledge, developed by David Ceulemans of the University of Antwerp & Flanders Make, enables us to perform a more optimal controller tuning for demanding client cases.

ATS:

In one specific case, using these tools in our workflow allowed us to reduce the necessary motor size by 45% while reducing the tracking error from 68° to 0.75°. We are confident we will create similar improvements in all our client cases.