Implementation of a Fuzzy Controller on Low-Cost
Embedded Systems for Learning Process Control
Jorge Buele1,2, Franklin Salazar L., Homero J.
Velasteguí
Facultad de Ingeniería en Sistemas, Electrónica e Industrial
1
Universidad Técnica de Ambato
Ambato, Ecuador
{jl.buele, fw.salazar, hvelastegui6534}@uta.edu.ec
Angel Soria
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Purdue University
Lafayette, United States of America
asoriach@purdue.edu
Abstract— In this paper we propose the low-cost solutions
granted to university students to contribute to their professional
development. Two control systems were simulated applying
embedded devices, such as the BeagleBone Black and Udoo Neo
Full boards applied on a didactic flow station. With these
prototypes, the aim is to develop critical thinking in the user as
well as putting into practice, the learned concepts about
advanced controllers. To visualize the events produced, an
interface can be made in the software LabVIEW and the option
of saving this data in an .xlsx file is added for the later analysis of
this information. The validation of the project is carried out by
evaluating the acceptance of these characteristics by the students
and the experimental results of the controller to changes in the
set-point value.
Keywords— Embedded systems, Process control, Fuzzy control,
Engineering education.
I. INTRODUCTION
In the area of process control a constant search is
conducted to improve the performance of the process and
therefore the benefits for the end user [1-3]. Improvement of
the process depends on the applied control strategy and proper
selection of tuning parameters. The combination of these
elements allows the process to achieve an efficient and
automatic operation [4]. Control theory encloses classic and
advanced controllers, PID being more popular in the first
group [5]. Application of this controller allows the
development of several industrial applications due to its
versatility [6]. With the passage of time advanced controllers
were taking more prominence, and fuzzy controller is a good
example for the ease in which it adjusts to the needs of the
system [7-8].
Institutions of higher education are focused on improving
the teaching – learning process of the students of technical
careers that seek to consolidate their knowledge with the
respective practice [9-11]. For the teaching of control
978-1-5386-5995-3/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE
John Espinoza, Victoria M. López, Pablo A. Zambrano
Departamento de Eléctrica y Electrónica
2
Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas ESPE
Sangolquí, Ecuador
{jjespinoza6, vmlopez2, pazambrano, jlbuele}@espe.edu.ec
Daniel Fiallos
Facultad de Arquitectura e Ingenierías
Universidad Internacional SEK
Quito, Ecuador
dfiallos.mti@uisek.edu.ec
algorithms, programmable logic controllers (PLC) are usually
used, with the inconvenience of elevated costs to acquire them
[12-14]. In addition, they require the purchase of additional
modules for the development and implementation of advanced
controllers. Taking into consideration smaller budgets, tools
that offer similar benefits consider low cost embedded devices
as an option [15-16]. Thus, fulfilling the objective of training
better professionals.
Following this context, the academy has developed
research projects that seek to prepare students for their future
roles in the industry. In [17] a real time process simulator has
been developed, users can benefit by learning programming
skills and industrial automation. In [18] the construction of a
modern control training module is presented, allowing the
students to familiarize with industrial processes such as flow
and speed, to evaluate commonly used controls in a practical
way. In [19] the implementation of a training system for
industrial process remote control is presented, the system
enables the reconfiguration of the process to provide precise
knowledge to the user. In addition to this, proposals have been
development with the use of embedded boards. As in [20], a
Raspberry Pi board is used to perform control of household
devices by IoT. In [21 – 22] the implementation of a fuzzy
control algorithm for process control running on a Raspberry
Pi board is presented. In [23] Arduino and Raspberry Pi
boards are combined to perform control of devices with
intelligent communication. BeagleBone Black board is utilized
in the field of robotics to achieve the navigation control of a
robot, and to perform image processing in [24].
To provide the students with new tools that improve the
learning process, an advanced control algorithm applied on
BeagleBone Black and Udoo Neo Full embedded boards is
proposed. Also making the comparison of their performance
controlling the flow variable of an educational station that
simulates an industrial process, as it is displayed on Fig. 1.
With this station the users will put into practice the concepts
of advanced control theory that they received in the classroom.

Fig. 1. Diagram of the control system implemented
This project is divided into VI sections, including the
introduction I section 1, section II presents the hardware used;
section III talks about the control algorithm; section IV shows
the implementation of the proposal; and in section V discusses
about the obtained results. Finally, conclusions are presented
in section VI.
II. HARDWARE
A. Description of the plant
The educational flow station provides experimental results,
as shown in Fig. 2. It consists of a 25-gallon cylindrical
reservoir tank, three manual passage valves, and a three-phase
centrifugal pump of ½ HP, which drives the water that
circulates through the pipeline to and from the tank. In
addition, a rotameter graduated in gallons per minute and liters
per minute (GPM and LPM respectively). A magnetic flow
sensor, connected to a flow transmitter, which produces a
standard signal of 4 to 20 mA. As a final control element,
there is a frequency inverter (FI) that operates with an input
ranging from 0 to 10 V and proportionally modifies the speed
of the three-phase centrifugal pump. In this way it is possible
to control the flow that circulates through the pipeline.
Fig. 2. Educational flow station
B. Embedded boards
BeagleBone Black is an embedded platform, based on a
SITARA processor AM335x at 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8, with a
memory of 512 MB DDR3, 69 GPIO and special pins (I2C,
CAN, SPI, serial ports, timers and PWM) that operates in a
range of 3.3 to 5V, it has 7 internal ADC that work at 1.8V
with up to 12-bit resolution. It is ideal for integrated
applications since it operates with Linux operating system,
which can boot in less than 10 seconds [25].
Udoo Neo Full is a platform that works with Android /
Linux and incorporates its own version of Arduino IDE, it
operates with a heterogeneous NXP i.MX processor, which
has two co-processors, the first one is the ARM Cortex-A9
that makes it compatible with Arduino UNO and the second is
Cortex-M4, a feature that makes it compatible with Linux
systems. It is perfect for various applications such as: robots,
3D printers and automation in general [26].
III. SOFTWARE
A. Fuzzy controller
A fuzzy logic controller objective is to provide a system
equipped with techniques that allow work with an
approximate reasoning, instead of an exact one. Its main
advantage is the ease with which it adapts to the experiences
and the environment in which the user develops, because it
works with a control algorithm that uses linguistic labels. A
fuzzy control system is the one that makes decisions and
offers the possibility of creating a control algorithm by using
linguistic variables. Compared to classical controllers, diffuse
variables can assume values between 0 and 1 [27-28]. The
advantages of this controller are: implementation with
processes where obtaining a mathematical model is complex
due to its non-linearity, non-modeled physical quantities,
unpredictable disturbances, etc. It also allows adjustment to
the problem in the same linguistic terms used by a person.
The proposed fuzzy controller consists of 3 stages as
mentioned in [29] which are: a) Fuzzyfication, during this
stage the physical variables of the system are converted into
linguistic variables granting them a degree of belonging,
through the membership functions associated with said sets, b)
Inference, in this stage the base knowledge formed for the
controller is used, and the fuzzy input and output sets of the
system are interrelated; In this work we use the logical
inference of Mamdani type that is represented in (1), last c)
Defuzzyfication, stage in which based on a fuzzy set obtained
from the inference rules, and said set is transformed to a
numerical value that the process control can use upon the
system. In the implemented control algorithm, the output is
obtained by means of the center area method.
IF µ1 is A1 AND µ2 is A2 AND… AND µn is An THEN v is B (1)
Where µi y vj are linguistic variables; and Ai and Bj
symbolize the linguistic values that these variables must
assume.
B. Control algorithm
The algorithm is developed with the library eFLL
(Embedded Fuzzy Logic Library), compatible with the
Arduino IDE and C programming language compilers; it is
structured in four blocks of programming that are: declaration
of variables, Fuzzification, rules of inference and
Defuzzification. For the algorithm to execute the Fuzzification
stage it is necessary to create an object of the Fuzzy type as
indicated in (2).
Fuzzy * fuzzy = new Fuzzy ()
The current error e(k) is represented by 7 input functions
identified with the following linguistic labels: "ENA",
"ENM", "ENB", "Z", "EPB", "EPM", "EPA"; where, "E"
symbolizes error, "N" negative, "P" is positive, "A" represents
high, "M" is medium, "B" means low and "Z" is zero and to
ensure adequate space for error variations, a range of errcaudal
= {-30, ..., 30} was established, declared by the FuzzyInput
and FuzzySet objects. Whereas for the cumulative error ea(k)
the labels "EN", "O" and "EP" are used, which means negative
error, zero and positive error respectively.
For the exit rules used in the Defuzzification stage, it is
proceeded in the same way as for the inputs, also FuzzyOutput
object is used, and the following 7 linguistic labels "VmuyB",
"VB", "VMB" "C", "VMA", "VA" and "T" in the output range
= {-5, ..., 5}, where "V" is voltage, "M" is medium, "B"
represents low, "A" symbolizes high and "T" is terminal. In
Fig. 3, each of the fuzzy sets is shown.
a)
b)
Fig. 3. Fuzzy sets: a) Fuzzification sets. b) Defuzzification sets
Table 1 shows the basis of rules with which the fuzzy
controller will act. The structure to create the objects of the
antecedent and consequent of the algorithm simulates the
structure of the Mamdani fuzzy rules in the form IF ......
THEN ......, in this way the antecedent is represented by the
FuzzyRuleAntecedent object, followed by the joinSingle
(Linguistic tag) method to point to the case according to the
rule to be formed, the consequent is symbolized by the
FuzzyRuleConsequent object, and finally to add the rule the
FuzzyRule object is used.
TABLE I. FUZZY RULES BASE
EN O EP
ENA T T T
ENM VA VA VMA
(2) ENB VMA VMA VMA
Z VMA C VMB
EPB VMB VMB VB
EPM VB VB VB
EPA VB VmuyB VmuyB
IV. IMPLEMENTATION
A. Hardware Implementation
As stated previously, the flow transmitter produces a signal
that varies from 4 to 20 Ma, for this to happen the flow level
should oscillate between the values of 10 to 40 liters per
minute (LPM). To use the transmitter as a controller input, the
signal must be transformed into a standard voltage with
magnitude ranging between 1 to 5 V, by using a current-to-
voltage converter (I/E), to be more specific a resistance of 250
ohms placed in series with the circuit. In order to reduce any
kind of high frequency noise a low pass filter and a capacitor
were placed in the output of the power supply of the integrated
circuits.
Given the previous handling of the signal, for data
acquisition in the case of BeagleBone Black board, the 12 bits
resolution double channel analog to digital converter (ADC)
MCP3202 is used. The ADC conversion communicates
through the serial peripheral interface bus (SPI), a
synchronous protocol that operates in full duplex mode, and
provides good data transmission speed through four signals.
For the case of the Udoo Neo Full board, an internal 16-bit
ADC is used, but it is configured to operate at 12 bits, just like
its counterpart. Each of the boards will perform the control
action that is configured with software.
After the control stage, an external digital to analog
converter (DAC) is required to emit a voltage signal, since
neither of the two boards possess an internal one. To achieve
this the PCF8591 integrated circuit (I.C) is used, which
receives data through I2C communication and operates at 8
bits of resolution. For technical reasons said I.C produces a
maximum of 5V that must be amplified with gain 2 to be
connected to the frequency inverter of the process that
operates between 0 – 10 V. Afterwards, an impedance
coupling is made between the designed circuit and the flow
station, by the means of a voltage follower. To perform all of
the signal conditioning discussed in this chapter, a printed
circuit board has been made, the design is shown in Fig.4.
Finally, boxes are made to protect the developed electronic
boards and facilitate their connection.
 b)
Fig. 5. Display interface: a) Block diagram b) Front Panel

For the visualization of the process an interface was

created using LabVIEW software, and for both cases serial
a) b) communication was chosen. Taking into consideration that
Fig. 4. Design of the electronic board: a) BeagleBone Black. b) Udoo Neo each board offers different programming commands, and
Full digital pins that can be used for this purpose. The desired set
point value (SP) is transmitted from the interface to the board.
Meanwhile, for the monitoring of the process, data is
B. Software implementation encapsulated in a frame to redirection it in the opposite
Both embedded boards require the installation of an direction. In this frame are the values of SP, Process Variable
operating system because they are like mini-computers. (PV) and Control Variable (CV), separated by start and end
Ubuntu Mate was chosen for this application, a Linux release characters. This interface is shown in Fig. 5
that does not require many resources and provides all its
functionalities, this open source language allows the V. RESULTS
downloading of free add-ons such as the WiringPi library,
which is required for the configuration of the MCP3202 A/D A. Acceptance Tests
converter using SPI protocol, and the PCF8591 D/A converter
using I2C. For the validation phase; 40 students of the last semesters
of the electrical and electronics engineering department, tried
For the implementation of the fuzzy controller logic the the developed prototypes. In order to evaluate the percentage
standard embedded system library Embedded Fuzzy Logic of acceptance that each proposal has. The results are presented
Library (eFLL), which was chosen because of its efficient and in Table 2.
simplified implementation of fuzzy systems, it is written in C
++ and C, using the standard C language library “stdlib.h”,
TABLE II. ACCEPTANCE TESTS
this one has no restrictions on the quantity of fuzzy rules,
inputs and outputs, and only depends on the speed of the Indicators BeagleBone (%) Udoo (%)
controllers processing.
Cost 100 87.5
Friendly interface 100 100
Scalability 82.5 82.5
Sturdiness 92.5 75
Controller reconfiguration 95 95
Controller performance 97.5 80
Real-time response 100 100

As can be seen, the system implemented with the

BeagleBone card is more popular with the students, especially
in terms of robustness and driver performance. On the other
hand, the second proposal despite having a higher cost and
a) being a relatively new technology also provided good results.
B. Controller performance
The whole setup for the experimental validation is shown
in Fig. 6.

a)

Fig. 6. Complete setup of the flow control station.

Figure 7 shows the response curves produced by the

process variables when the control algorithm is implemented b)
in the embedded boards. The process starts at the lower limit, Fig. 7. a) Response curves of PV vs. SP. b) CV response curves
that starts in 25 LPM, and then modifies its value to 35, 15, 35
and 20 LPM every 20 seconds, respectively. This curve serves
as evidence that the response of the controllers is fast; the VI. CONCLUSIONS
percentage of the control action without the presence of The compatibility of the Udoo Neo full board with
oscillations is less than 65%, which lengthens the lifespan of programs developed in Arduino IDE, makes this embedded
the final control element. The temporal and over-oscillation system an alternative with greater capacity for development of
characteristic values of the system with BeagleBone Black fuzzy control algorithms; maintaining the same programming
board are presented in Table 3 and with Udoo Neo Full board development characteristics provided by Arduino platform.
in Table 4. Although BeagleBone Black and Udoo Neo Full boards
can’t be considered industrial solutions due to their lack of
TABLE III. PERFORMANCE IN DIFFERENT SETPOINT CHANGES WITH sturdiness, they respond satisfactorily to SP changes and
BEAGLEBONE BLACK
disturbances applied on the flow process of a plant, showing
Indicators 25-35 35-15 15-35 35-20 percentages of overshoot and establishment time acceptable
for each embedded system. In addition, from data obtained in
Dead time (s) 0.48 0.56 0.32 0.24 the validation phase it can be confirmed that the performance
Rise time (s) 4.242 4.363 4.121 4 of both boards at the time of algorithm implementation, and its
response in real time will help with the consolidation of the
Settling time (s) 6.975 7.764 6.909 6.58
student's practical knowledge of automatic control.
Overshoot (%) 0.19 0.31 0.16 0.28
Acknowledgment
TABLE IV. PERFORMANCE IN DIFFERENT SETPOINT CHANGES WITH To the dean Pilar Urrutia and authorities of FISEI of
UDOO NEO FULL
Universidad Técnica de Ambato (UTA), for support for this
Indicators 25-35 35-15 15-35 35-20 work and future research. To the Universidad de las Fuerzas
Armadas ESPE Extensión Latacunga because of the facilities
Dead time (s) 0.436 0.524 0.291 0.218 gave for the development of this work.
Rise time (s) 2.545 2.618 2.473 2.399

Settling time (s) 3.854 4.291 3.818 3.636

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