Rapid control prototyping
Base principles. Rapid Control Prototyping (RCP) is a design methodology that aims at accelerating control software development cycles. The methodology seeks to rapidly address experimental activities in order to quickly identify and correct potential issues. If necessary, design iterations can be made with computer-assisted design, notably involving system simulations. RCP mainly focuses on control system development (by opposition to the plant itself) and may be complementary with other techniques, such as HIL, PIL, or PHIL. Rapid Control Prototyping has gained popularity thanks to its ability to accelerate product development and reduce their time-to-market. The  approach also helps mitigating design risks, thanks to their early identification. Using Rapid Control Prototyping within a product development requires implementing some sort of mockup (often downscaled) of the system under study as well a control system. The control system hardware often differs from the final hardware, as the latter may not yet be available (or clearly defined) at the time of prototyping. In fact, generic control hardware with superior flexibility and performance is often preferred over the final hardware, which is often cost-optimized for a specific application and use. This use of generic control hardware during the early  development phase may even be considered as a definition of Rapid Control Prototyping, distinguishing it from design methodologies that exclusively involve the final hardware, possibly with several iterations. Fields of application. Rapid Control Prototyping is involved in various fields of engineering, for instance: Rapid control prototyping hardware. Although the control system involved in RCP may theoretically be of any kind, RCP often requires specific programmable digital control hardware. The latter generally features the following characteristics: As a matter of fact, these characteristics have been somewhat only enabled by recent advances in embedded computing and computer-assisted design, which explains the  still relatively confidential nature of RCP. Also, the obvious drawback of such systems is their high investment cost, which often requires amortization over several development projects. Processing devices and cycle time. RCP solutions differ in their capabilities, notably as their applications may be widely different. While some systems may require involving a large number of sensors and/or actuators, some others may implement computationally-demanding algorithms, or other require very short cycle times. Based on these requirements – or combinations of requirements – different processing devices may be involved in the control hardware: