Welcome to the An Introduction to Real-Time Computing for Mechanical Engineers: A Lab-Based Approach companion website. The website is maintained by the authors of the book, Rico A.R. Picone, Joseph L. Garbini, and Cameron N. Devine.

The book was published September 3, 2024 by the MIT Press.

The following is a table of contents of the book, each section of which has a corresponding page on this website. Some sections’ pages contain all the material from the book, but many are available only in the book. In addition, this website contains additional resources for the book, especially in the form of video lectures and lecture slide handouts.

Due to the book’s integration of both target system (TS) and development system (DS) hardware and software, this website maintains alternative versions of each, available for viewing via the upper right-hard TS and DS selection menus.

Table of Chapters

Getting started

Real-time computing fundamentals and programming the high-level user interface

Efficient design and programming the midlevel User Interface

Digital communication, signals, and programming the low-level user interface

Motor control, finite-state machines, and waiting for real-time computing

Real-time scheduling with threads and interrupts, digital circuits, and mechanical switches

Digital realization of dynamic systems

Closed-loop motor velocity control with a digital controller

PID Motor Position Control and Path Planning

Target and development systems

Laboratory components

Git version control

Utility C Function Documentation

MATLAB functions

Code repository index

Additional target computer feature programming

Discrete approximations of some continuous controllers

Lists of Figures and Tables

Acronyms and Initialisms