In control research and design it is frequently necessary to explore, evaluate, tune and compare many control strategies. These activities are assisted by software tools of increasing complexity; however, even with the existing high performance tools these activities are very time consuming due to they imply hundred if not thousand of simulations. If the process of doing such simulations is not automated it can be a very time consuming task. There has been proposed evolutionary algorithms (EA) that in the search for an optimal control automatically generate many control structures. However, the space of possible controllers for any dynamical system is huge. Hence it is mandatory to restrict the search space. The best way to restrict the controller search space is to let the designer influence the search direction. In this paper we propose a software tool for control research that has as its main part an EA that produce only controllers having a pre-specified morphology. By specifying a controller morphology the designer can influence the search direction without losing the exploration capability of evolutionary algorithms. The EA is endowed with a cost function tailored for fast evaluation of closed-loop controller performance. The use of the tool is illustrated by searching an sliding mode and similar controllers for an unstable linear and two nonlinear systems.
Translating a control law to code so that it can be executed in real time by a microcontroller is time-consuming and requires knowledge in diverse areas. There are powerful tools like Matlab and DSpace, that can ease the process, however, these tools are expensive and hide the way the translation is actually made. These two factors greatly diminish the use of these tools in education and small business. This paper presents SystDynam, a high-level language designed for describing static and dynamical systems and hence, controllers. The language was purposely created to be easy to process in order to obtain a C code by using free software tools. Therefore, a senior student or a control engineer with a short training in language processors can understand how the translation is made. The necessary code for translation is described here and is freely available. Having the controller described by C code, it can be compiled to be executed as the main task in a real-time operating systems, thereby obtaining the real-time controller. The complete process can also be used for emulating dynamical systems, thereby enabling the use of hardware in the loop simulations and low-cost rapid prototyping and providing an auxiliary tool for teaching some engineering courses.
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