PC-based control of robotic and mechatronic systems under MS-Windows NT workstation

In this paper, a method is proposed to perform control using INTEL(R) based PCs operated by Windows NT(TM) directly. The software package that was developed is called WinRec v.1 (Windows Real-time Control). This low cost method keeps all the advantages of Windows NT without attaching any other kernels and avoids switching different operating systems between experimentation and control design/analysis. A thorough description of the method to set up the multimedia timer provided by Microsoft Development Network (MSDN) Library is presented. Self-customized algorithms based on advanced control techniques can be implemented with the standard protocol that is established here. The proposed protocol is evaluated using two different systems in control experiments. In the first, an industrial robot manipulator is controlled by applying an independent joint PID control scheme. Results are also shown from experiments where LQR and H-2 controllers are applied to suppress vibrations of a flexible payload carried by the robot manipulator. In the second system, position, force, temperature, voltage and current data are simultaneously recorded in order to evaluate the performance of a Shape-Memory-Alloy (SMA) mire bundle actuator in open loop control experiments.