A VM-based approach for real-time EtherCAT control

The paper is aiming at designing and implementing a real-time control platform for distributed motors. With the proposed design, experts can activate a monitor at a remote site, check the states of motor in real time and send proper control parameters to immediately control the motor via its controller. By leveraging the modern virtualization technologies, two designs are presented in the paper. We investigate the real-time performance of the host machine by executing stress test on the virtual machines. We also prove that the realization of our design can obtain a precise response time when issuing a command to an EtherCAT slave device.