Rapid prototyping of real-time control laws for complex mechatronic systems

The rapid prototyping of complex systems embedded in even more complex environments raises the need for a multi-level design approach. Our example is taken from mechatronic design in the automotive industry and illustrates the rapid prototyping procedure of real-time critical control laws. Our approach is based on an object-oriented structuring, not only allowing central control units but also supporting distributed control units, as needed in today's designs. The implementation of control laws is a stepwise-refined hardware-in-the-loop simulation, reducing the simulation part in each step. At the lower level, common platforms (such as FPGAs, microcontrollers or specialized platforms) can be instantiated. This is illustrated by an asynchronous data-flow processor for the high-performance rapid prototyping of cyclic iterated control laws.