The Real Time Controls Laboratory (RTIC-Lab)



[About]	[Project Site]	[Documentation]	[Download]
[FAQ]	[Forums]	[Guestbook]	[Mailing List]

WELCOME!! To the home site of the Real Time Controls Laboratory (RTiC-Lab), a Hard Real Time Controller Implementation and Simulation Environment for Linux
GENERAL INFORMATION
The Real Time Controls Laboratory, or RTiC-Lab (pronounced Arctic-Lab), is a semi-detached open source software designed to run on Linux and Real Time Linux. It is designed as an easy to use controls prototyping tool. It gives the controls engineer real time access to: plant states, plant I/O, controller states, controller parameters (scalar or matrix), and hard real time environment for plant modeling Run time data can currently be saved/displayed into: stdout, disk, RTiC-Scope, a standalone Oscilloscope Emulator (see screenshots) any standalone application written by the user. Communication between the user's program and RTiC-Lab is handled by RTiC-Lab's new API (see manual). Most importantly, RTiC-Lab is intended to be extensible by creating a simple to use interface in Linux so that users can add their own modules. RTiC-Lab is released under the Free Software Foundation's General Public License (GPL), which means that if you don't like some of the features that are already put into the code, then you may tailor the code to your needs. Main author: Edgar F. Hilton, but programmers, artists, and general volunteers are always welcome!
AVAILABLE CARD DRIVERS
As of the latest release, RTiC-Lab has drivers for the following A/D cards: Computer Boards, DAS 1401/12 and D/A cards: Computer Boards, CIO-DDA06 Computer Boards, PCI-DDA08/12 and due to the easy card interface, users are encouraged to add more to these lists. Jose Guilberto of the New Mexico Institute of Technology has written a set of drivers that make the necessary I/O calls to COMEDI. Consequently, all COMEDI drivers will work with RTiC-Lab.
APPLICATIONS AND SCREENSHOTS
The following are some known applications of RTiC-Lab: suspension of a 37lbf rotor in a five degree of freedom magnetic bearing, at the Rotating Machinery and Controls Laboratory (ROMAC), University of Virginia (UVA). magnetic leveling of a balance beam, at ROMAC, UVA suspension of a magnetically suspended continuous flow ventricular assist device (artificial human heart) at ROMAC, UVA. performance comparisons between hard real time solutions for Linux at Dresden University of Technology A development picture of RTiC-Lab can be seen here using the fvwm2 window manager. The following are some example screenshots of the parameter update windows from the above projects: Five degree of freedom, strictly proper, PID controller with GNOME's metallic plum theme: Each of the radial axes have four notch filters. The reference position and rolloff frequencies for all controllers are also updateable. Five degree of freedom, PID + Hinfinity + Autobalance controller with GNOME's eMac theme: The user can update all the necessary parameters for the axial strictly proper PID controller, the matrices for the 44th order Hinfinity controller, and the iteration gain for an automatic balancing controller.
Contact Edgar F. Hilton