Marcel A. Groothuis

Virtual prototyping through co-simulation of a Cartesian plotter

This paper shows a model-based design trajectory for the development of real-time embedded control software using virtual prototyping. As a test case, a Cartesian plotter is designed. Functional correctness of the plotter software has been ensured by means of co-simulation using a virtual prototype before deploying it on target. Except for the interface implementation, the software that is used in the co-simulation is identical to the software that is compiled to run on the target computing platform. Virtual prototyping is especially important if the real target can damage itself if it is operated outside its safe operation zone or when prototypes are not yet available for testing. The co-simulation of the software against a virtual prototype resulted in a first-time-right deployment on the real target.

Multi-view methodology for the design of embedded mechatronic control systems

The design of embedded control systems for monitoring and control of mechatronic systems has a multi-disciplinary development trajectory. These systems consist of heterogeneous components developed by different disciplines (control engineering, electrical engineering, software engineering and often many more). The design trajectory needs therefore a multi-disciplinary design methodology that enables concurrent design and interactions between all involved disciplines, reducing inconsistencies and conflicts that occur during the design phase. This paper proposes a multi-view methodology to address the above-mentioned issues. The main purpose is to shorten the design time and at the same time increasing the reliability and predictability of embedded (computer) control systems.

HW/SW Design Space Exploration on the Production Cell Setup

This paper describes and compares five CSP based and two CSP related process-oriented motion control system implementations that are made for our Production Cell demonstration setup. Five implementations are software-based and two are FPGA hardware-based. All implementations were originally made with different purposes and investigating different areas of the design space for embedded control software resulting in an interesting comparison between approaches, tools and software and hardware implementations. Common for all implementations is the usage of a model-driven design method, a communicating process structure, the combination of discrete event and continuous time and that real-time behaviour is essential. This paper shows that many small decisions made during the design of all these embedded control software implementations influence our route through the design space for the same setup, resulting in seven different solutions with different key properties. None of the implementations is perfect, but they give us valuable information for future improvements of our design methods and tools.