Hardware in-the-loop Simulation - A Rapid Prototyping Approach for Designing Mechatronics Systems

• Authors: Thuyen Le;Frank--M. Renner;Manfred Glesner
• Venue: RSP '97 Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Rapid System Prototyping (RSP '97) Shortening the Path from Specification to Prototype
• Year: 1997

In this paper we present a rapid prototyping approach for the design and verification of mechatronics systems. We show the need of rapid prototyping the information processing part to perform hardware in-the-loop simulation due to limited modeling capability of mechanical processes. We propose the use of a graphical environment based on dataflow graphs to capture suitable algorithms. Through automatic extraction of C-code targeting commercial DSP processors and hardware in-the-loop simulation, shorter turn-around cycles can be achieved. Furthermore, FPGA emulation or ASIC design can be started from the same dataflow graph which has already been validated, yielding improved confidence and efficiency of the design flow. A real-world design example shows the feasibility of this approach of handling the complexity and heterogeneity of many algorithms found in mechatronics applications.