Robotics, Drones and Real-Time Control Systems
Real-time control systems that hold a hard deadline, autonomous response, and the instrumentation that proves the loop closes.
Context
Real-time control systems all share one shape. Something has to sense, decide and act, and the interesting constraint is not the algorithm, it is the deadline. Every cycle has to fit inside the window, including the worst one, and average timing is not evidence of anything. That changes how the whole system gets built: what runs in an interrupt, what the acquisition path costs, where the actuator latency actually sits, and how you instrument it so the timing can be shown to a reviewer instead of asserted. The same discipline covers the slower loops, the temperature and humidity control behind a calibration bench, and the autonomy above them, where a sensor event has to turn into a physical response with no operator in the middle.
Scope
What this covers
- 01Hard real-time control systems on embedded targets: a closed loop whose full sense, decide and actuate path is budgeted inside a fixed cycle time and measured against the worst case.
- 02Soft real-time process control: temperature, humidity and environmental loops for calibration benches and reliability studies.
- 03Autonomous response systems end to end: a sensor event, the decision logic, and the physical actuation it triggers.
- 04Unmanned aircraft integration over MAVLink, including automated dispatch from a detection event.
- 05Infrared and optical object tracking driving an actuator inside the loop.
- 06Robotic arm kinematics and control.
- 07Actuator, motor and valve drive electronics with sensing feedback and defined safe states on failure.
- 08Data acquisition systems: high-speed sampling, register-level DMA capture, and the path from raw acquisition to analyzable data.
- 09Hardware test automation: unattended benches, automated data collection for batch analysis, and calibration throughput as an engineering target rather than a staffing one.
- 10Verification and validation of real-time control systems against design requirements: test plans, procedures, acceptance criteria and written reports.
- 11Instrumentation and measurement: mixed-signal oscilloscopes from 500 MHz to 5 GHz, logic analyzers, vector network and vector signal analyzers, and J-Link over JTAG and SWD.
Record
Work behind this
Delivered work, stated as facts rather than claims. Programs and employers are named where naming them is what makes the record checkable. Clients are not.
Questions
Questions technical buyers ask
How do you show a control loop actually meets its deadline?
By measuring it, on the bus, with a logic analyzer or a scope watching a pin toggled at the start and end of the cycle. That gives worst-case timing across a long run rather than an average, and the same trace is what a reviewer can be handed. A loop that meets its deadline on average is a loop that misses it, just not while anyone is watching.
Do you handle the mechanical side as well?
To prototype depth. SolidWorks, 3D printed enclosures, mounts and fixtures, built in house on the same iteration loop as the electronics. Production tooling, structural design and anything load bearing belongs with a mechanical engineer, and saying so early is cheaper than discovering it at the first design review.
What does a first engagement usually look like?
A timing and architecture review of the loop as it stands: where the cycle time actually goes, what runs in an interrupt versus the main path, where the acquisition and actuation latency sit, and whether the deadline holds under worst case rather than typical conditions. The deliverable is measured numbers and a ranked list of what to change.
Start a technical conversation
Describe the system, the constraint and the deadline. An engineer answers.
Tools and platforms we work with: MAVLink. Real-time closed-loop control. Data acquisition with register-level DMA on Cypress PSoC. Infrared tracking sensors, Peltier and resistive thermal control. MATLAB and SolidWorks. Tektronix and Keysight mixed-signal oscilloscopes, Saleae and Digilent logic analyzers, SEGGER J-Link.