A Realtime Simulation environment for rapid prototyping of digital control systems and education

In this paper, a software architecture for the realtime simulation of dynamic systems is presented. This architecture is very useful for rapid prototyping of digital control systems because it allows to verify the closed loop behavior of the final controller without using the real plant, avoiding dangerous conditions and risks of hardware damage. This goal is achieved by using the same interface between the controller and the simulated and real plant. The overall system is developed in the RTAI-Linux environment, and the unified interface, based on the COMEDI library, allows to switch the controller from the simulated to the real plant without any modification of the control software. The system may be also used for fault detection, task planning and also as a teaching tool in Mechatronic/Digital Control Courses. To evaluate the performance of the realtime simulation environment, the control of an inverted pendulum and of the lumped paramenter model of a tendon-sheath transmission system are presented and discussed.