Vehicle-based Control Computer Systems

This report is presented in two parts: the first part describes a design and implementation methodology for real time software suitable for control of mechanical systems such as vehicles. This method provides for a design description of the system, a means of capturing the system structure in such a way as to modularize the software writing job, and a portable implementation method. The second part is concerned with a particular problem in the mechanical system control: estimating velocity when the even rate from a digital encoder is lower than the controller's sample time. Methods are explored for performing this estimation that achieve best accuracy overall, but can also avoid the problem of spurious estimates when the velocity reverses.