Control System Development Platform

March 3, 2015

Ryan Gehm

dSPACE has introduced a new, compact control system development platform for laboratory use, MicroLabBox, that offers high computing power and functionalities for creating, optimizing, and testing controllers, as well as implementing data-acquisition applications in automotive and aerospace engineering, robotics, electric drives, and academia. MicroLabBox features a 2-GHz dual-core real-time processor (Freescale PowerPC QorIQ P5020) capable of achieving fast closed-loop cycle times of less than 15 µs. For extremely fast control applications, the integrated high-performance Xilinx Kintex field-programmable gate array can be used for high-speed computation and allows for parallel, exact, and fast I/O processing. MicroLabBox includes more than 100 I/O interfaces of not only conventional types, such as analog I/O and digital I/O, but also specialized interfaces like CAN, Ethernet, and position encoders. An integrated sensor supply provides power for sensors without any additional laboratory devices. MicroLabBox can be used with or without a host PC. In autonomous mode, without the host PC, the real-time application is loaded from the onboard flash memory when MicroLabBox is started. A programmable buzzer and programmable set of LEDs provide status information of the real-time application to the user. A USB connector lets users save data to a mass storage device. MicroLabBox is supported by a dSPACE software package including real-time interface for model-based I/O integration into Simulink and ControlDesk Next Generation.