Hard Real-Time Control (HRTC) is to be intended in terms of the relative time scales of the electromechanical components of the mechatronic system to be controlled. MicroElectroMechanical Structures (MEMS) or Drive-by-Wire (DbW) applications are good examples of hard real-time controls.

The combination of algorithmic and logic processing power by means of micro and/or Digital Signal Processor (uP, DSP) and Programmable Logic Devices (PLD) or Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) results in a powerful Algorithmic and Logic Core (ALC) to be used in many different and demanding mechatronic applications.

The digital platform here proposed is an industrial PC equipped with a FPGA board whose firmware Intellectual Properties (IP) can be accessed by the different software Service Routines (SR). Firmware is memory mapped into the PC memory space and the interrupt management is handled by a combined structure of software scheduler and firmware interrupt manager.

The FPGA board is also used to implement a hard real-time bus to connect such a digital platform to a number of DSP/FPGA based Actuator Control Units (ACU) dedicated to current and torque fine drive and control.

The FPGA board driver is developed within the proprietary hard real time RTAI API's and the development tool chain can be fully handled within the Simulink environment: simulation, software and firmware code generation use the very same model.

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