Adaptive control of a total artificial heart — An experiment investigation

A real-time dSPACE-based control system for an artificial heart model based on electrical hardware has been developed. The control algorithm, based on an autoregressive moving average (ARMA) model for a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) system that includes a baroreceptor model is proposed. The baroreceptor model plays a crucial role in heart rate control by the central nervous system (CNS) over the short term. The ARMA model for blood pressure control has shown to be useful in computer simulations. A minimum prediction error controller of the heart has been designed that uses a one-step-ahead design method for the MIMO system. This paper applies heart rate control and pressure control to the adaptive control of an artificial heart model. The dSPACE hardware and Simulink provide the means for modeling the controller in software and then applying it to the actual hardware via a digital signal processing board. This paper presents a comparison between the simulation results and dSPACE-based actual hardware results, which agree reasonably well.