Using Real Time Workshop for rapid and reliable control implementation in the Frascati Tokamak Upgrade Feedback Control System running under RTAI-GNU/Linux

In this paper, we report on recent developments based on Mathworks' Simulink and Real Time Workshop (RTW) packages to obtain a user-friendly environment where the real time code implementing novel control algorithms can be easily generated, tested and validated. Thanks to this new tool, the control designer only needs to specify the block diagram of the control task (namely, a high level and functional description of the new algorithm under consideration) and the corresponding real time code generation and testing is completely automated without any need of dedicated experiments. In the paper, the necessary work carried out to adapt the Real Time Workshop to our RTAI-LXRT context will be illustrated. A necessary re-organization of the previous real time software, aimed at incorporating the code coming from the adapted RTW, will also be discussed. Moreover, we will report on a performance comparison between the code obtained using the automated RTW-based procedure and the hand-written C code, appropriately optimised; at the moment, a preliminary performance comparison consisting of dummy algorithms has shown that the code automatically generated from RTW is faster (about 30% up) than the manually written one. This preliminary result combined with the fact that the use of RTW eliminates the coding workload leads to the conclusion that this approach to control implementation grants significant advantages. According to the FTU experiment program, the actual deployment of the new tool is scheduled for the next experimental campaign.