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TI to Supply Control DSP Technology for Segway™ Human Transporter
Programmable DSP offers performance and peripheral integration
HOUSTON (December 10, 2001) - Continuing to drive digital innovations, Texas Instruments (TI) (NYSE: TXN) announced today that the Segway Human Transporter (HT), the first self-balancing, electric-powered transportation machine, is using digital signal processing (DSP) technology from TI's TMS320C2000(tm) DSP platform to implement closed-loop motor control and balance computation. For more information, please see: http://dspvillage.ti.com/pdfs/segwayc2000.pdf
"TI is excited that the TMS320LF2406A was chosen for the Segway HT. This revolutionary product is a great example of the innovations made possible with our technology, and it is exciting to see such inventive end-products based on our DSPs," said Christophe Chene, director of the Digital Control Systems business unit at TI. "TI's C2000™ DSPs are optimized for digital control, providing customers with the integration and performance needed to develop such products."
Segway chose TI's LF2406A DSP because of the high-processing performance and peripheral integration that it offers. Contemporary designers often choose DSPs for digital control because modern control algorithms demand a high level of millions of instructions per second (MIPS)-intensive real-time processing capabilities, which microcontrollers cannot provide. In the Segway HT, the LF2406A was specifically used to control two motors with a single DSP. In addition, it was used to perform the intensive balance computation needed to allow users the stabilization desired when using this product. Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway HT, and his team developed a breakthrough technology the company calls "Dynamic Stabilization," which enables Segway HT's self-balancing emulation to work seamlessly with the body's movements. TI's DSPs were integrated into this dynamic balancing component.
In addition to the DSP, the Segway HT utilizes devices from TI's logic group. These devices include the 74AHCT1G125DCK single bus buffer gate with 3-state output, CD74HCT4051M96 and CD74HCT4053M96 high-speed CMOS logic analog multiplexers/demultiplexers, and the SN74HCT04DR hex inverter. TI continues to develop logic devices that lead the industry in performance and support and offer features necessary to enhance DSP-based system designs, while also providing a glueless interface with TI's high-performance DSP product families.
"We chose the Texas Instruments LF2406A DSP not only because it offered the performance needed to be innovative and the high-level of peripheral integration that allowed us to meet our small form factor requirements, but also because of TI's commitment to developing next-generation silicon," said J. Douglas Field, vice president of product development and chief engineer, Segway LLC.
The LF2406A DSP, operating at 40 MIPS, gives the customer the needed performance to develop innovative products and saves designers months of development time allowing them to get the product to market quicker. It also offers 32K words of integrated on-chip FLASH memory, which enables field code upgrades of the Segway HT after it leaves the factory. In addition, the programmable password FLASH security feature of the LF2406A protects the customer code investment and intellectual property.
The LF2406A DSP also offers the following peripherals:
- 32K words (64Kbyte) of on-chip sectored and protected FLASH memory
- Two event-manager modules (PWM, Quadrature encoder interface, capture units)
- 10-bit Analog to Digital converter, 16 channel, 375ns conversion time
- Controller Area Network (CAN) 2.0B module
- Serial Communication Interface (SCI)
- Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI)
- General purpose bit I/O pins
- Watchdog (WD) timer module
- Power management
TI's LF2406A DSP is targeted at a broad range of embedded control applications including motor control, uninterruptible or switch-mode power supply, automotive, optical networking, printers, consumer and industrial applications. TI is committed to providing a roadmap for C2000 DSP designers and has already announced next-generation products: the TMS320F2810 and the TMS320F2812 DSPs. The 32-bit TMS320C28x™ DSP core is the world's highest- performance DSP core specially designed for digital control applications and offers up to 400 "extended precision" MIPS of computational bandwidth.
TI's C2000 DSPs are supported by the easy-to-use eXpressDSP™ software and tools and the TMS320LF2407 eZdsp™ Starter Kit that allows designers to get started with their design on the LF2406A. The LF2406A offered in the 100-pin LQFP PZ package sells today for a price of $10.03 in 1K units.
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