Rapid Control Prototyping on Standard Industrial Automation Hardware

Rapid Control Prototyping (RCP) and Hardware in the Loop (HiL) are widely used in the development of complex control algorithms, as they speed up the development process. Often, expensive, special RCP systems are used. As standard automation hardware, such as an industrial PC (IPC), is nowadays also very powerful and reliable but at the same time cheaper, it can also be used as an RCP system. An RCP workflow is demonstrated in which code for a programmable logic controller (PLC) is generated from Simulink models and executed on a Beckhoff IPC. Desktop simulation, hardware-in-the-loop simulation and the results on the real system are presented using Model Predictive Control of an experimental test setup of a seesaw system.