Nos Clients

At Clarkson University, an RT-LAB system composed of a command station and two real-time targets is used to teach robotics, control, and simulation. A typical project involves controlling a shaker with base and building structure (3 levels made of aluminum with sheet metal sides) while recording accelerations and displacements of the various levels.

RT-LAB is used for robotics control and real-time simulation applications by the Electrical Engineering Department of the École Polytechnique de Montréal.

"When we started the project, we weren't sure what computation power was going to be required and we didn't want a platform that would not achieve the performance we needed. RT-LAB's distributed processing assured us that this would not happen. Furthermore, compared to other control projects under development in our laboratory, RT-LAB has allowed us to develop the controllers and user interface much quicker than implementing hand-written codes." - Dr. Vladimir Polotski, Project Supervisor, École Polytechnique

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in collaboration with Columbia University has chosen RT-LAB as their control solution for their Levitated Dipole eXperiment (LDX). LDX is a novel experiment designed to explore the physics of plasma confinement in a magnetic dipole field. It involves levitating a 1/2 tonne superconducting magnet at 2 meters over the ground for periods of over 10 hours. LDX is a collaboration between Columbia University's Dept. of Applied Physics and the MIT Plasma Science & Fusion Center and is funded by the Department of Energy's Office of Fusion Energy. RT-LAB's reliability, low cost and flexibility were the reasons the experimental physicists cited in explaining their selection.

This is another application involving vibration analysis. In this project, adaptive damping system research is performed by NC A&T for NASAs Ace Autonomous Control Engineering department. The goal is to reduce vibrations of missile launch platforms, which in many cases may damage expensive equipment. They have purchased a two-node system from Opal-RT to perform the tests and controller for the dampening system. There is also ongoing research in robust, adaptive nonlinear control with applications in the spacecraft naval systems, robotics, and power systems.

The University of Alabama in Huntsville has recently purchased a two-node RT-LAB system for a micro-gravity vibration test bench. The test bench consists of a horizontal pusher mechanism that will induce vibrations on objects on electromagnetic bearings. The purpose of this project is to analyze the reaction of objects in a zero gravity environment. NASA employees will be performing the tests for the International Space Station project on the University's premises.

The University of Michigan has acquired RT-LAB to provide mechanical engineering students access to the latest in deployable Rapid Control Prototyping systems in their new Mechatronics Lab. The Lab will be fully equipped with RT-LAB stations to be used both for undergraduate simulation and control courses as well as for postgraduate embedded and real-time systems courses.

An interesting and fun use of RT-LAB recently came to our attention from a group of engineering students at the University of Michigan. Using RT-LAB Engineering Simulators, they have developed an electromechanical experiment, called Chaockey, that pits the player against a computer-controlled goalkeeper on an air hockey table.

To quote their web site: "Chaockey is a single player game with interactive computer feedback. The challenge of the game is for the human player (offense) to navigate a physical object into a goal while being hindered by a computer controlled obstacle (defense). The game's structure consists of three main subsystems: a sensing system, an information processor, and an active response system."

Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO) purchased a real-time simulation system from Opal-RT in order to achieve the required performances of their Satellite Image Real-Time Analysis Project. After evaluating many systems from different vendors, UQO chose the real-time simulation system that offered performance, openness, and scalability for their project. The system included Opal-RT's state of the art software RT-LAB with the shared memory option to be used on a distributed 8 Xeon processor computational system.

Université de Sherbrooke has purchased a 12-workstation virtual laboratory system in which students will be able to obtain remote access through an Internet connection. This project is a collaboration of several Canadian and European Universities who will share each other's laboratory experiments through the real-time networking technology provided by RT-LAB. Both low-end and high-end applications will be controlled and simulated using identical hardware and software configurations. The project is another demonstration of RT-LAB's versatility and openness.

University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) is currently developing an attitude controller in the context of the MOST satellite program. The satellite will be used as a in-orbit telescope, which will provide capabilities currently not available with the Hubble telescope. RT-LAB is used for the development of the attitude controller itself. Another project with UTIAS involves the delivery of the simulation engine for a complete satellite simulator. The system is a 16 node PC-based simulator and allows several configurations, which vary depending on the application simulated. Simulations are conducted in two different laboratories linked with a high-speed fibre-optic CLan link on Giganet to allow interaction between the simulations.

"The University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies carries out teaching and research in the areas of aircraft simulation and avionic control systems. We chose an RT-LAB Real-Time Simulator from Opal-RT for our lab because of its power, flexibility and affordability.

We need to do some highly complex simulations, so we need the RT-LAB system's sixteen parallel processors to crunch through massive off-line parameter sweeps.

When we are not running large-scale models, we reconfigure the individual processors for a multitude of uses, from driving multiple simultaneous hardware-in-the-loop experiments to running the user-interface of our flight simulator.

Best of all, the systems use of commercial-of-the shelf components helped keep down our purchase price and assure an upgrade path.

Dr. Hugh Liu, Professor, University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS)

Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi is one of the seven IITs and was created in 1961 as an institute of national importance. It is a deemed university and awards degrees at the Bachelor, Master and Doctoral levels. Currently, it has 23 Departments and Research Centres. The Department of Electrical Engineering is one of the largest departments in IIT Delhi, and has a distinguished faculty, all holding Ph.D. degrees from renowned institutes in India and abroad. This Department offers two B.Tech. programmes and six M.Tech. programmes in Communications, Computer Technology, Control and Instrumentation, Integrated Electronics and Circuits, Power Systems and Power Electronics, Electrical Machines and Drives. In addition, the Department offers two interdisciplinary M.Tech. Programmes, one in VLSI Design, Tools and Technology and the other in Opto-electronics and Optical Communication. RT-Lab is being used in laboratory for work in Power Electronics, Power Quality, Electrical Machines and Drives.