Automatic deployment of industrial embedded model predictive control using qpOASES

Different high-speed quadratic programming (QP) solvers are incorporated into an ANSI C code generation framework for embedded Model Predictive Control (MPC). The controllers developed are based on step response (linear) models and design configurations obtained from SEPTIC, Statoil´s software tool for MPC applications. In order to achieve high online computational efficiency, offline computations/preparations are made at the code generation stage, and appropriate problem data are used in the QP solvers. We discuss implementation aspects arising when running an embedded MPC controller on an industrial PLC and present results of hardware-in-the-loop simulation tests for two challenging industrial applications. The results indicate that the online active-set strategy as implemented in the software package qpOASES exhibits superior performance compared to both a tailored interior-point method and a primal-dual first-order method for the step response class of models considered in this paper.