Specialised hardware for state space control of a dynamic process

This paper considers the use of an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for a stand alone controller. The ASIC estimates process-states and controls a dynamic process. As a case study, an inverted pendulum is used as the controlled process. The process is nontrivial and reflects several industrially related control problems. To control the inverted pendulum it is necessary to estimate the states of the process. This is done with a Kalman filter. The estimated states are used to control the process with a linear quadratic Gaussian regulator. The design of the standalone controller device is divided in two stages: the first is to design the control system; the second is to design the hardware controller device. The control system design is done with Mathlab/Simulink and the hardware controller design is done with Viewlogic/VHDL-models. The first choice target technology is field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) since this technology offers fast prototyping and reasonable cost for experimental work.