Innovative tools for real-time simulation of dynamic systems

In this paper, we present a software architecture, based on RTAI-Linux, for the real-time simulation of dynamic systems and for the rapid prototyping of digital controllers. Our aim is to simplify the testing phase of digital controllers by providing the real-time simulation of the plant with the same interface used for the communication between the control applications and real plant. This 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. Moreover, a set of tools for helping the users in the development of the real-time simulation tasks of the plants have been developed. A great attention has been posed in the automatic generation of symbolic kinematic and dynamic models of robotic manipulators from a description of the robot in terms of kinematic parameters and inertia/center of mass of each link. The system, besides being useful for rapid prototyping of mechatronic control systems, may be used for fault detection, and also as a teaching tool in Mechatronic/Digital Control Courses. A case study, the real-time simulation and control of the PUMA 560 manipulator, is presented and discussed. Copyright © 2007 International Federation of Automatic Control All Rights Reserved.