Wireless event-triggered controller for a 3D tower crane lab process

This paper studies the design and real-time implementation of an event-triggered controller for a nonlinear 3D tower crane where the communication between the controller and the actuators is performed over a low-power wireless network. A flexible Event-Generation Circuit (EGC) is proposed in order to implement event-driven controllers for Networked Control Systems. Furthermore, a detailed experimental analysis on the performance of the event-triggered controller and the influence of packet losses on the transmitted actuation messages are presented. The results show that the event-triggered controllers in networked control systems are able to maintain the same level of performance as compared to periodic controllers, while increasing the sensors/actuators lifetime by reducing network bandwidth utilization.