There are two stages of electronics before the motor:
- The controller. This might do something as simple as output a complementary PWM signal at some particular duty cycle, or something much more complex based on various sensor inputs. This is a hard-real-time piece of electronics, although it almost always contains a MCU of some sort.
- The driver. This turns the output of the controller into high-power currents for the motor.
Old engineers call the power stage “amplifier” because before MOSFETs, you had to use BJTs to control the currents (like in a class A stereo amplifier.) The amplifier generated quite a bit of heat at that time.
These days, with super-fast MOSFETs that are just on or off (PWM style) we call them “drivers” so you can appear all modern and suave by making sure you use that word :-)
The “inverter” is another different thing altogether – it’s traditionally something that takes DC, and turns it into AC, and thus would go before the actual “driver” bit. However, my belief is that the “driver” and “inverter” circuitry are often joined into one single unit, and whether you call it “driver” or “controllable inverter” probably depends on oral tradition within your particular company.
The question then, which is what you’re getting at, is “how do I tell this inverter what to do?”
Analog control signals are something I haven’t seen for a long time myself, except in some older electric wheelchairs. But I’m sure some people use them still. They’re annoying because it’s actually hard to generate precision analog control (you need a DAC) and it’s hard to send precision analog signals long distances (because of interference) and it’s hard to decode on the receiving end (you need an ADC.)
The Schneider controllers also claim to support CANopen, Modbus, and Profibus. You should ask whether they have (or can get) the version that supports CANopen; that will be easier to talk to than something analog.
If you really have to use analog, then you’d need to hook up a DAC of some sort to generate that signal. That DAC needs to be able to drive whatever voltage level they want for input, at whatever current the input requires. Perhaps you can get away with something simple like a microcontroller with built-in 12-bit DACs, and perhaps an opamp that re-buffers the signal if you need more current than the few milliamps that the MCU can output.
Try this: http://amzn.to/2vCWfWx
It’s a programmable microcontroller, and it has a built-in 12-bit DAC. You can download the tools to program it from the PJRC website. Unfortunately the tools install into the terrible Arduino IDE, but the software and hardware itself is solid (I’ve used it in the past successfully.)
Then, you write a small piece of software on the MCU, that simply does “read something from the USB port, and if there’s a command there, set the DAC output voltage to match.” Over, and over, and over again :-)
On the Jetson, you plug in this board using USB, and write software that opens the USB port (as a serial port) and writes commands to the microcontroller to set the output voltage to whatever you need.
But, really, tell your engineers to get with the 2000s and get a CAN capable controller/driver.