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Engineer working beside a collaborative robot arm on a factory floor with mobile robots

Robotics, Actuators & Motor Control

Precision Motor Control
Robot Actuator Design
Workplace Safety

CRATUS engineers the electronics that make machines move: motor drives and actuator controllers, real-time control firmware, wireless links across moving joints, ROS 2 integration, and the AI that sees obstacles and predicts the next failure.

One team for
  • Hardware
  • Firmware
  • Software
  • AI
  • 2× CAN FDOver wireless links across rotating joints with the ICL8-WC182
  • 9–36 VInput range on the ICL8-WC182 wireless CAN board
  • 40 AInductive-load protected per channel on the LOMA ICL8-LC574
  • ROS 2Drivers, nodes and CAN bridges for your robot software

The challenge

Electronics for Motion Control

Moving machines punish every weak point: cables flex, loads kick back, timing slips and people step into the workspace.

Worn cable bundle in a robot arm cable carrier

Cables that keep breaking

Slip rings and cable carriers wear out at rotating joints, causing intermittent faults that are hard to trace.

Robot arm beside a monitor showing jittery motion control signals

Control loops that jitter

Loops that share a processor with communications and UI miss deadlines, and the motion shows it.

Worker sharing a workstation with a collaborative robot inside a marked safety zone

People in the workspace

Robots that share space with people need protective stops that always work, and the intelligence to rarely need them.

CRATUS closes these gaps at every layer — hardware, firmware, software and AI, engineered by one team.

See our approach

Our approach

Motion Controller Hardware
Algorithm & Firmware Development

Smooth, safe motion comes from hardware and firmware designed together: current sensing matched to control-loop timing, protection matched to the load, and software that makes all of it visible.

Motion controller board connected to a servo motor with motion profiles on a monitor

Hardware

BLDC/PMSM, stepper and brushed DC drives; solenoid, valve and brake drivers; gate drivers; shunt and Hall current sensing; encoder and resolver interfaces; regenerative energy handling; and compact actuator boards that fit your mechanics.

  • Motor drives & gate drivers
  • Actuator & brake control
  • Wireless CAN FD joints

What we execute

What we build for machines that move.

New robot platforms, custom actuators, or a retrofit that makes an existing machine smarter.

Motor drive inverter board with power stages and a servo motor on a test bench

Motor drive electronics

Three-phase inverters and gate drivers, current sensing, protection, thermal design and EMC filtering for battery-powered and line-powered machines.

Hardware

Laptop showing motion control waveforms beside a stepper motor test rig

Motion-control firmware

FOC with space-vector PWM, cascaded control loops, S-curve trajectories, encoder and resolver interfaces, auto-tuning, and loop timing measured on real hardware.

Firmware

Pneumatic and electric actuators with solenoid valves on an automation test rig

Actuators, solenoids & brakes

Drivers for solenoids, valves, grippers, linear actuators and brakes, with inductive-load protection, peak-and-hold current control and position feedback.

Hardware · Firmware

Two robot arm joints linked wirelessly across a rotating interface

Wireless joints & distributed control

The INTERCAL8 ICL8-WC182 carries dual CAN FD over wireless links across rotating and moving joints, removing data slip rings and fragile cable carriers.

Hardware · Firmware

Autonomous mobile robot slowing down as a worker enters its safety zone

Perception & human safety

Safety-rated LiDAR, vision and people-detection zones for speed-and-separation monitoring and protective stops, built with our LiDAR and perception team.

Hardware · Software · AI

Tablet showing a robot fleet dashboard with mobile robots moving in a warehouse

Robot software & fleet intelligence

ROS 2 integration, mission and telemetry back ends, UWB real-time location for centimeter-level positioning, OTA updates and AI predictive maintenance across a fleet.

Software · AI

INTERCAL8 LOMA & related products

Power Management Design
Functional Safety, Redundancy & Fail-safe

LOMA Load Managers bring electronic circuit breaker (ECB) technology to machine power, with inductive-load protected channels, programmable trips and per-channel monitoring. They are controlled over MODBUS, J1939, CANopen or proprietary Wireless CAN. Paired with INTERCAL8’s wireless CAN FD and thermal products, they simplify both power and data on moving machines.

LOMA ICL8-LC574 four-channel AI-enabled electronic circuit breaker board
LOMA

ICL8-LC574

AI-Enabled Electronic Circuit Breaker

  • 4 × 40 A channels
  • AC & DC
  • Edge-AI ready

Protects and sequences motor, solenoid and brake circuits on four inductive-load protected channels. Sheds low-priority loads when a battery sags, with no breaker resets in the field.

Product details for ICL8-LC574
LOMA ICL8-PC548 isolated DC power controller board
LOMA

ICL8-PC548

Isolated DC Power Controller

  • 1500 V isolated
  • Ideal-diode hand-off
  • DC systems

Uses integrated ideal diodes to hand off seamlessly between battery and dock or charger power on mobile robots. Remotely resets or powers off DC subsystems.

Product details for ICL8-PC548
LOMA ICL8-GP515 general-purpose load controller board with isolated I/O
LOMA

ICL8-GP515

General-Purpose Load Controller

  • 1500 V isolated I/O
  • Dual RS-485 & CAN
  • Contactor banks

Isolated digital I/O and dual RS-485 & CAN for locks, beacons, indicators and contactors around a robot cell.

Product details for ICL8-GP515
LOMA ICL8-EB104 4-inch touchscreen display showing load control channels
LOMA

ICL8-EB104

Multifunction Display & System Controller

  • 4″ touchscreen
  • PoE or 110–220 VAC
  • Ethernet · RS-485 · Wi-Fi · BT

Cell-side touchscreen for power states, manual overrides and algorithmic control of every LOMA channel.

Product details for ICL8-EB104
INTERCAL8 ICL8-WC182 wireless dual CAN FD control board in a weatherproof enclosure
INTERCAL8

ICL8-WC182

Wireless Dual CAN FD Control Board

  • Dual CAN FD
  • 9–36 V input
  • OTA updates

Wireless dual CAN FD across rotating and moving joints, replacing separate gateways, radios, power supplies and protocol bridges.

Product details for ICL8-WC182
INTERCAL8 ICL8-TM116 16-channel temperature transmitter board
INTERCAL8

ICL8-TM116

AI-Enabled 16-Channel Temperature Transmitter

  • 16 isolated channels
  • ±0.1 °C
  • On-device AI

Monitors motor, drive and battery temperatures on 16 channels and predicts thermal failures with on-device AI.

Product details for ICL8-TM116

AI built in

INTERCAL8 AI Assistant

Manage INTERCAL8 power hardware in plain language. Ask for channel status, balance the system, or set a rule such as “shed non-critical loads when consumption crosses a threshold” — no code required.

Explore LOMA
INTERCAL8 AI Assistant

When the battery drops below 20%, turn off the beacon and the tool heater.

Rule saved. Channel 3 (beacon) and channel 4 (tool heater) will power off below 20% battery. Drive and brake circuits stay on.

Illustrative example

How we work

Mechanical, Thermal, Electrical Engineering,
Firmware & Software Development
One Team in a Box

Opened servo motor with exposed stator windings and tools on a workbench

CRATUS works as a Team-in-a-Box. Hardware and firmware are built together, so timing is optimized, latency is lower and iterations are faster, with no hand-off delays between vendors.

  1. Discover

    Requirements, constraints, target standards and success metrics captured on one page you sign off.

  2. Architect

    Partition hardware, firmware, software and AI; pick key components; review risk and BOM cost early.

  3. Prototype

    Schematics, PCB layout, firmware bring-up and first working units, designed with the mechanics in mind.

  4. Validate

    Bench, hardware-in-the-loop, fault-injection, environmental and EMC pre-compliance testing, with reports you can hand to a lab.

  5. Produce & support

    DFM/DFT, test fixtures, pilot builds, production support, over-the-air updates and lifecycle engineering.

Standards we engineer to

Motion Control Systems
in the Age of Cobots & Humanoids

We design drives, controls and robot electronics to the machinery and robot-safety standards your customers and integrators will check against.

Automated production line with robots, drives and control panels connected over industrial interfaces
  • ISO 10218-1 / -2Safety of industrial robots and robot systems
  • ISO/TS 15066Collaborative robot operation
  • ISO 13849-1Safety-related parts of control systems
  • IEC 61800-5-1Adjustable-speed drives: electrical safety
  • IEC 61800-5-2Drive safety functions such as STO and SS1
  • IEC 60204-1Electrical equipment of machines
  • ISO 3691-4Driverless industrial trucks and their systems
  • ANSI/A3 R15.08Industrial mobile robots

Certification is issued by accredited third parties such as TÜV, UL or exida. CRATUS engineers, documents and pre-tests to the standard and supports your assessment; we don’t self-certify.

FAQ

Robotics and
motion control,
answered.

What robot builders and machine OEMs ask us most about drives, actuators and connected motion, across hardware, firmware, software and AI.

Still have a question? An engineer will answer it directly.

Ask an engineer

Getting started

What kinds of robotic and motion systems do you support?

Autonomous mobile robots and AGVs, robot arms and cells, gantries and positioning stages, automated tools and test equipment, and cranes and heavy machinery. We build new designs and retrofit existing machines with sensing, connectivity and safety.

Do you design the mechanics too?

Yes. CRATUS also offers industrial and mechanical design and prototyping, so the electronics are designed together with the enclosure, thermal path and cable routing. You work with one Team-in-a-Box instead of three vendors.

Hardware

Which motors and actuators do you drive?

BLDC and PMSM, stepper and brushed DC motors, plus solenoids, valves, grippers, linear actuators and brakes. We cover everything from low-voltage battery systems to higher-voltage industrial drives, scoped per project.

How do you get signals across rotating joints without slip rings?

With wireless CAN. The INTERCAL8 ICL8-WC182 combines dual CAN FD channels, dual wireless links, 9–36 V input, galvanic isolation, ESD protection, an industrial temperature rating, hardware node addressing and OTA firmware updates on one board. It replaces separate gateways, radios, power supplies and protocol bridges.

Power still needs a path across the joint, so we design that too: a power-only slip ring, inductive power transfer or a local battery.

How do you deal with inductive kickback and regenerative energy?

With clamps and TVS protection sized to the load, brake-chopper dissipation or regeneration back into the battery, DC-bus capacitor sizing and over-voltage monitoring. For switched loads, the LOMA ICL8-LC574’s channels are inductive-load protected.

Firmware

Do you implement field-oriented control (FOC)?

Yes. We implement FOC with space-vector PWM using encoders, Hall sensors or resolvers, or sensorless observers when cost or packaging require it. We tune current-loop bandwidth to your motor and load, and provide tuning tools so your team can adjust gains in the field.

How do you keep motion deterministic?

Current loops run in hardware-timed interrupts on Arm Cortex-M class MCUs, or on a DSP or FPGA when the bandwidth calls for it. Communications and UI run on a separate core or processor. We measure loop jitter and latency on real hardware.

How do safe stops work in your designs?

We implement drive safety functions in line with IEC 61800-5-2. Safe Torque Off (STO) removes gate-drive energy through an independent hardware path. SS1 and SS2 bring the axis to a monitored, controlled stop, then either remove torque or supervise standstill. Brakes are controlled and tested. See our Functional Safety & Failsafe Electronics page for the full approach.

Software

Do you work with ROS 2?

Yes. We write ROS 2 drivers and nodes for custom hardware, bridge CAN and CAN FD networks into ROS 2 topics, integrate navigation and manipulation stacks, and set up simulation so software can be tested before the hardware is ready.

Can you add monitoring to machines we already have?

Yes. We add sensors and telemetry gateways and connect them through ASSET-Rx EDGE, CRATUS’s no-code/low-code edge middleware. You get dashboards and alerts for utilization, faults and maintenance.

AI

Where does AI add value in robotics projects?

Three places. Perception detects people, vehicles and obstacles from LiDAR and cameras on Jetson-class hardware. Predictive maintenance uses motor-current signatures, vibration and temperature. Anomaly detection watches cycle times and forces. CRATUS also builds the annotated and ground-truth datasets these models need.

Is AI part of the safety function?

No. Protective stops rely on safety-rated sensors, such as safety-rated LiDAR, and deterministic logic. AI makes the machine more productive around that, for example by anticipating path conflicts and slowing early so the protective stop is rarely needed.

Can operators control power hardware in plain language?

Yes. The INTERCAL8 AI Assistant lets operators query and manage LOMA power hardware in natural language. For example, they can see which loads are drawing the most or shed non-critical loads during peak demand.

Working with CRATUS

How do we start a project with CRATUS?

Send us a message through our contact form with what you’re building, where it will operate and your timeline. We’ll schedule a technical discovery call, then send a scoped, phased proposal, so you can begin with an architecture study or prototype and commit to production later.

Can you work alongside our in-house engineers?

Yes. We can own the whole system as a Team-in-a-Box, or take a defined piece (the power stage, the firmware, the cloud pipeline, the AI model) and work inside your repositories, toolchains and design reviews.

Can you take the design all the way to production?

Yes. We carry designs from prototype through DFM and DFT reviews, test-fixture and end-of-line test development, pilot builds and full-scale production support.

Can we start with a proof of concept?

Yes. Many projects start with a bench demonstrator or a single retrofitted machine. That de-risks the control approach and the business case before you commit to a production design.

Talk to a CRATUS engineer

Tell us what needs to move.

Share the motor, load, duty cycle and environment, or the machine you want to make smarter. A CRATUS engineer will reply with questions, an architecture and a phased plan.

Contact Us

Let’s Make Safety Smarter.

Talk to our team about your facility, and let’s design a system that fits your risks and goals.

Request a Solution Brief

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