Hardware Neural Control of CartPole and F1TENTH Race Car

Nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) has proven to be an effective control method, but it is expensive to compute. This work demonstrates the use of hardware FPGA neural network controllers trained to imitate NMPC with supervised learning. We use these Neural Controllers (NCs) implemented on inexpensive embedded FPGA hardware for high frequency control on physical cartpole and F1TENTH race car. Our results show that the NCs match the control performance of the NMPCs in simulation and outperform it in reality, due to the faster control rate that is afforded by the quick FPGA NC inference. We demonstrate kHz control rates for a physical cartpole and offloading control to the FPGA hardware on the F1TENTH car. Code and hardware implementation for this paper are available at https:// github.com/SensorsINI/Neural-Control-Tools.

Feedback control of event cameras

Dynamic vision sensor event cameras produce a variable data rate stream of brightness change events. Event production at the pixel level is controlled by threshold, bandwidth, and refractory period bias current parameter settings. Biases must be adjusted to match application requirements and the optimal settings depend on many factors. As a first step towards automatic control of biases, this paper proposes fixed-step feedback controllers that use measurements of event rate and noise. The controllers regulate the event rate within an acceptable range using threshold and refractory period control, and regulate noise using bandwidth control. Experiments demonstrate model validity and feedback control.