An Open Source Real Time Environment for Control Solutions Design, Optimization and Testing of Parallel Kinematics Machines

In the present paper a methodology and tool for the design and simulation based verification of operating machines control solutions, and a PC based Controller running on the Real Time Operating System Linux-RTAI, are presented. The proposed framework is applied to the development and the optimization of the control of a prototypical PKS. The control system design tool is based on closed loop modelling and simulation in the integrated ADAMS-Simulink environment. An Open Source Real Time Target for the PKS control based on the use of Qt-Libraries and C-Code software is presented, and its performance is compared with the control solution obtained by means of Automatic Code Generation instruments, provided by Matlab\Simulink, i.e. RealTime-Workshop and X-RTAILab.