Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation of Multibody System Models with Transputers

Abstract

In this paper an approach for the systematic implementation of real-time simulations of multibody system models on transputer networks is presented. The structure of the symbolic equations of motion is used for partitioning the model into independent modules for parallel processing. The parallelization includes the concurrent evaluation of subsystem equations and the concurrent computation of the inertia matrix along with its factorization, and of the force vectors and control inputs. The parallelized multibody system equations can be linked to control modules in a transputer-based real-time simulation environment. The real-time simulations allow on-line controller tuning and, through appropriate hardware interfaces, support hardware-in-the-loop simulations. Some results of robot dynamics simulations are presented.