COTS-Based Real-Time System Development: An Effective Application in Pump Motor Control

The progress of embedded control systems in the last several years has made possible the realization of highly-effective controllers in many domains. It is essential for such systems to provide effective performance at an affordable cost. Furthermore, real-time embedded control systems must have low energy consumption, as well as be reliable and timely. This research investigates primarily the feasibility of implementing an embedded real-time control system, based on a low-cost, commercially off-the-shelf (COTS) microcontroller platform. It explores real-time issues, such as the reliability and timely response, of such a system implementation. This work presents the development and performance evaluation of a novel real-time control architecture, based upon a BeagleBoard microcontroller, and applied into the PWM (pulse width modulation) control of a three-phase induction motor in a suction pump. The approach followed makes minimal use of general-purpose hardware (BeagleBone Black microcontroller board) and open-source software components (including Linux Operating System with PREEMPT_RT real-time support) for building a reliable real-time control system. The applicability of the proposed control system architecture is validated and evaluated in a real case study in manufacturing. The results provide sufficient evidence of the efficiency and reliability of the proposed approach into the development of a real-time control system based upon COTS components.