Robert Piéchaud, UMR STMS IRCAM-CNRS-UPMC, Paris, France

Active control is a common application of hard real-time. In particular, active control of musical instruments pushes the limits of determinism and low-latency very far, as it must deal with relatively high frequencies in order to be efficient.

With modal active control of vibrations as a starting point, a more generic, abstract, yet lightweight object-oriented active control framework has been developed for covering potential situations where real-time environment, hardware, and control model may vary a great deal, but where functional expectations remain rather constant.

Practical results for one implementation of this framework on a low-cost platform will be exposed, namely on a Beaglebone Black running Xenomai and equipped with a custom DAQ cape in a SISO context, also taking advantage of the PRUSS (Programmable Real Time Unit) as a powerful complement to Xenomai for achieving an even better determinism.