It is well known that the hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HILS) is a wide range used method for control prototyping and system modeling applications. This paper presents a microcontroller-based control system design and development for real-time control algorithms prototyping using the HILS strategy. The entire hardware module of this system is based on a BigPIC6 development board interfaced to the Matlab/Simulink software environment. The plant is modeled by using Simulink components on the xPC target and the control algorithms are implemented on the microcontroller-based module. As a result of the adopted development strategy, a powerful and versatile system has been obtained for real-time control algorithms prototyping and development. A large set of experimental results proves the feasibility and efficiency of the developed HILS system, providing a very efficient research and development tool both for modeling and experimental purposes. Index Terms — hardware-in-the-loop, microcontroller, real-time control, rapid prototyping, HIL simulation