By the use of 20-sim, real-time loop controllers for mechatronic systems can be developed. Using the 20-sim4C software this controller can be run on actual hardware. A number of development targets are by default supported by this software, it is also possible to make a custom target.
The goal of this project is to explore the capabilities of a microcontroller as a target for 20-sim-generated C code. A microcontroller is an interesting target as it is also able to run without an operating system allowing for fast interrupt response times, while having direct access to a wide range of peripherals. Also it can be low energy, has a low profile on a PCB and is relatively cheap. This comes at the cost of processing power.
Therefore, a microcontroller will be benchmarked to explore the limits of the control loop complexity, interrupt latency and jitter. Options to overcome the performance bottlenecks in the system will also be explored and tested.
Finally a demo will be created to put the system to a real world test and evaluate its overall performance.