The Wikibook of Embedded Control Systems Design |
 | This book is intended forprofessional readers. |
This is a textbook at the level of universityMaster's orgraduate students in Engineering (Mechatronics,Mechanics, Electrical/Electronics,Computer Science,Systems Engineering), thatexplains how to designmotion control systems, that is,computer-controlled machines with important moving parts, such asrobots,machine tools,cars,buses,airplanes,ships,satellites,telescopes, etc.
The emphasis of the book lies on thedesign of embedded systems, andmuch less on the technical details in the systems. (Such details are oftencovered already in the many Wikipedia articles about the systems'components.) In other words, the book focuses on thesystems levelthinking that the engineer should do when designing a new embeddedapplication (or redesigning/improving already existing systems). In many places, the book provides a motivated list ofthings to think of,do's and don'ts andbest practices in the design of a system from individual components. The book also tries to bring somestructure and classification into the tremendously large variety ofembedded systems and theirdesign process: designing a new vending machine brings very different challenges than the design of an automated luggage handling system in a large airport, or than the development of a new generation offootball playingrobots.
Readers should learn from this book what design criteria (technical, economical, social, etc.) arerelevant for specific embedded systems, and what trade-offs areappropriate in different categories of embedded systems. In addition, the book should help readers to estimate thecomplexity of the system they want to develop, and to identify where this complexity comes from in their specific application. Coping with system-level complexity is a majornon-functional requirement behind all embedded systems design and development, since it is the key factor that defines how many resources (time, people, hardware, software,…) will be needed to bring the project to a successful end.
At the moment, this book focuses mainly onmotion machines only, where the control is needed to make the machine move in a specified and safe way. So, its scope currently does not include other embedded control systems, suchas process or temperature control, video and audio signal processing,telephony, etc. Future enhancements in these directions are certainly welcome, although motion control systems typically offer extra design challenges with respect to the mentionedconsumer electronics kind of embedded systems—in that they have to cope with the real physical world and not just with the digital, man-made world—so their design aspects are typically a superset of what is found in consumer electronics.
Motion control systems involve software control components, but also computer-readablemodels to represent the physical world,sensors (partly hardware, partly software) to measure that physical world,actuators (partly hardware, partly software) to induce changes in the world, andplanners (pure software) to precalculate which actions the control system should take in order to reach a desired state.
Embedded can mean many different things (see alater chapter for a list of meanings), but a common characteristic is that the system's complexity—including all its configuration and control components and activities—are not made visible to the user of the systems, but remainhidden behind auser friendly interface that gives only access to the (virtual) model of theembedded system.
This example of an embedded system is used to introduce the most generic concepts of an embedded system, and to motivate the relevance of the later chapters in this book.
Design:
Digital hardware:
Software:
The initial version of this Wikibook was created byHerman Bruyninckx, together withthe students of the courseEmbedded Control Systems.René van de Molengraft, from the TU Eindhoven, provided valuable contributions during the second year of this course.
This Wikibook's layout was inspired by the excellent example of theControl Systems book.