Case Study: TH Rosenheim achieves hands-on, deployable servo drive controller design and remote collaboration with MathWorks MATLAB & Simulink

Rosenheim Technical University of Applied Sciences Students Build Servo Drive Controllers Using Model-Based Design

TH Rosenheim (Rosenheim Technical University of Applied Sciences) needed a way for graduate students to design, test, and implement platform‑independent servo drive controllers—and to extend those models to ASIC development—without forcing students to write VHDL/Verilog or rebuilding designs for each target. They used MathWorks’ Model‑Based Design with MATLAB and Simulink under a campus license to provide a familiar, collaborative environment that could be accessed remotely and validated across MCUs, FPGAs, and ASIC flows.

Using MathWorks tools (MATLAB, Simulink, Stateflow, Simscape, Fixed‑Point Designer, HDL Coder, and HDL Verifier), the team built a floating‑point controller, converted and verified a fixed‑point model as the golden reference, generated synthesizable HDL, cosimulated with Siemens EDA Questa to achieve identical results, and prototyped on FPGA before ASIC handoff via Cadence Innovus. The MathWorks workflow motivated students to collaborate on ASIC design, produced verified models deployable to multiple devices, enabled remote lab access during COVID‑19, and delivered measurable verification benefits—identical cosimulation results and FPGA prototyping that revealed real design defects prior to silicon.

TH Rosenheim

Martin Versen

Professor