Development and Verification of an Educational Low-Cost HILS Platform for Controller Design of Electromagnetic Suspension Systems

This paper presents a robust control design for an electromagnetic suspension (EMS) system using a low-cost Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation (HILS) testbed. The study addresses challenges such as time delay, noise, and disturbances by implementing an optimized DPID control strategy. In the HILS configuration, the controller is executed on a low-cost microprocessor, while the control target is realized either through a PC-based simulation (Case 1) or via an additional microprocessor (Case 2). Serial communication (Case 1) and Inter-Integrated Circuit (I²C) protocol (Case 2) are employed for data transmission between devices to evaluate performance under varying delay conditions. Simulation results show that both configurations achieve stable control within the specified delay limits, with the serial communication setup demonstrating a broader operational range. The proposed low-cost HILS system shows significant potential for both industrial applications and academic research. Future research will focus on evaluating the control system under wireless conditions and improving data communication efficiency.