Framework blends control signals across real and digital systems
Mixed-Reality Feedback Control: Towards Blending of Control and Digital Twinning
Robotics
Summary
Controlling robots and autonomous machines can involve both real hardware and computer simulations, but mixing these control signals is tricky. The authors propose a framework that helps combine control inputs and feedback from both physical devices and their digital models. This allows more flexible experiments and better testing during system development. Their approach aims to make the whole lifecycle of control system design smoother and more integrated.
What this means in practice
- •For robotics engineers: Integrate feedback from digital models and real robots for coordinated control experiments.
- •For autonomous system developers: Test control algorithms both in simulation and on physical prototypes seamlessly during development.
A position paper. It proposes an approach and reports no results.
Authors
Melisa Soydan, Mario Gleirscher
Abstract
Technologies, such as co-simulation, in particular, digital twins (DTs) are used for comprehensive and reliable prototyping, verification and validation (V&V) of control systems. There, the combination of feedback loops across multiple realities (e.g., simulations, physical setups) enables various forms of experimentation with robots and autonomous systems. However, the handling of multiple realities requires a more specific support by the modelling techniques used in control engineering. To streamline the latter in the system life cycle, we propose a framework for mixing (i.e., fusing, defusing) control input and feedback signals (i.e., stimuli, responses) in simultaneously operated plants for multiple realities.