Sept. 05, 2025, Sept. 05, 2025 –
Electric traction has become a critical part of a growing number of systems that need efficient motion and position control. Motors do not just provide the driving force for vehicles, from e-bikes to cars to industrial and agricultural machinery. They also enable a new generation of robots, whether they use wheels, propellers or legs for motion.
The other common thread for many of these systems lies in the way they are expected to operate in a highly connected environment. For instance, wireless connectivity has enabled novel business models for e-bike rental and delivers positioning and other vital data to robots as they move around.
But the same connections to the Internet open avenues of attack in ways that previous generations of motion-control systems have not had to deal with. It complicates the tasks of designing, certifying, and maintaining systems that ensure safe operation.
To guarantee the actuators do not cause injury, designers must implement safeguards for their control systems to prevent them being bypassed and creating unsafe situations. They also need to ensure that corruption by hackers does not disrupt the system’s behavior. Security, therefore, now plays a major role in the design of the motor-control subsystems.