In Networked Control System (NCS), the absence of physical communication links in the loop leads to relevant issues, such as measurement delays and asynchronous execution of the control commands. In general, these issues may significantly compromise the performance of the NCS, possibly causing unstable behaviours. This paper presents an original approach to the design of a complete digital control unit for a system characterized by a varying sampling time and asynchronous command execution. The approach is based on the Embedded Model Control (EMC) methodology, whose key feature is the estimation of the disturbances, errors and nonlinearities affecting the plant to control and their online cancellation. In this way, measurement delays and execution asynchronicity are treated as errors and rejected up to a given frequency by the EMC unit. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated in a real-world case-study, where the NCS consists of a differential-drive mobile robot (the plant) and a control unit, and the two subsystems communicate through the web without physical connection links. After a preliminary verification using a high-fidelity numerical simulator, the designed controller is validated in several experimental tests, carried out on a real-time embedded system incorporated in the robotic platform.

中文翻译：

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网络控制系统的嵌入式模型控制：实验性机器人应用

在网络控制系统（NCS）中，环路中物理通信链路的缺失会导致相关问题，例如测量延迟和控制命令的异步执行。一般来说，这些问题可能会严重损害 NCS 的性能，并可能导致不稳定的行为。本文提出了一种为具有变化采样时间和异步命令执行特征的系统设计完整数字控制单元的原始方法。该方法基于嵌入式模型控制（EMC）方法，其主要特点是估计影响设备控制的干扰、误差和非线性以及它们的在线消除。这样，测量延迟和执行异步性将被视为错误，并被 EMC 单元拒绝到给定频率。该方法的有效性在现实世界的案例研究中得到了证明，其中 NCS 由差速驱动移动机器人（工厂）和控制单元组成，两个子系统通过网络进行通信，无需物理连接链路。在使用高保真数值模拟器进行初步验证后，所设计的控制器在机器人平台中的实时嵌入式系统上进行的多次实验测试中得到验证。