Tools for rapid prototyping of embedded control systems

The need to minimize time to market while simultaneously producing a thoroughly tested product presents tremendous challenges. For example, design engineers of fuel injection systems in the automotive industry need tools that permit rapid prototyping of production embedded modules. The design and development tools must have capabilities for system modeling, control algorithm synthesis, simulation analysis, source code generation and testing of modules in the vehicle. This paper describes a workstation which facilitates rapid prototyping of real-time embedded control systems. The process of using the workstation to perform computer simulation of control systems, automatic generation of C code from controller block diagrams, hardware-in-the-loop simulation, and real-time control of a continuous time single-input single-output plant by a digital PID controller is presented