Integrated Real-Virtuality System and Environments for Advanced Control System Developers and Machines Builders

The pace of technological change is increasing and sophisticated customer driven markets are forcing rapid machine evolution, increasing complexity and quality, and faster response. To survive and thrive in these markets, machine builders/suppliers require absolute customer and market orientation, focusing on .. rapid provision of solutions rather than products. Their production systems will need to accommodate unpredictable changes while maintaining financial and operational efficiency with short lead and delivery times. Real-Virtuality (R-V) systems are an innovative environment to address these requirements by facilitating enhanced support in machine system design utilising integrated real-virtual environments centred on concurrent machine system development and realization. This environment supports not only machine system design but also the development of the' control system at the same time. Utilising the Real-Virtual Mapping Environment (RVMI;:), 3-D simulation machine models can perform actual machine operations in real-time when coupled with the real machine controller. This provides a more understandable, reliable and transparent machine function and performance. The research study explores different types of controller verification methods and proposes a new method which employs the use of a control signal emulator. The research study has fomulated a novel technique for emulating quadrature encoder signals to provide virtual closed loop control of servomotors. The deployment of a control signal emulator technique makes the system unique and removes its dependency on specific hardware. Enabling the real-time data from the signal emulation environment eases the task of realising a real-time machine simulator. To evaluate the proposed architecture, three case studies were performed. The results have shown that it is possible to create verified and validated machine control programs with no modification needed when applied to the real machine. The migration from the virtual to the real world is totally seamless. The result from the ????study show that the virtual machine is able to operate and respond as a real machine in real-time. This opens up the unexplored potential of integrated 3-D virtual technology. The real-time 3-D simulation virtual machine will enable commissioning and training to be conducted '!-t an earlier stage in the design process (without having to wait for the real machine to be built). Furthermore, various test scenarios can also be developed and tested on the system which helps to provide a better lofriderstanding of the machine behaviours and responses. This research study has made an original contribution in the field of machine system development. It has contributed a novel approach of using emulated control signals to provide machine control programmers with a platform to test their application programs at machine level which involves both discrete digital signals and continuous signals. The real-time virtual environment extends the application domain for the use of simulation. The architecture proposed is generic; to be exact it is not constrained to a specific industrial control system or to a specific simulation vendor

European White Book on Real-Time Power Hardware in the Loop Testing : DERlab Report No. R- 005.0

The European White Book on Real-Time-Powerhardware-in-the-Loop testing is intended to serve as a reference document on the future of testing of electrical power equipment, with specifi c focus on the emerging hardware-in-the-loop activities and application thereof within testing facilities and procedures. It will provide an outlook of how this powerful tool can be utilised to support the development, testing and validation of specifi cally DER equipment. It aims to report on international experience gained thus far and provides case studies on developments and specifi c technical issues, such as the hardware/software interface. This white book compliments the already existing series of DERlab European white books, covering topics such as grid-inverters and grid-connected storag

Measurable Safety of Automated Driving Functions in Commercial Motor Vehicles

With the further development of automated driving, the functional performance increases resulting in the need for new and comprehensive testing concepts. This doctoral work aims to enable the transition from quantitative mileage to qualitative test coverage by aggregating the results of both knowledge-based and data-driven test platforms. The validity of the test domain can be extended cost-effectively throughout the software development process to achieve meaningful test termination criteria

A framework concept for data visualization and structuring in a complex production process

This paper provides a concept study for a visual interface framework together with the software Sequence Planner for implementation on a complex industrial process for extracting process information in an efficient way and how to make use of a lot of data to visualize it in a standardized human machine interface for different user perspectives. The concept is tested and validated on a smaller simulation of a paint booth with several interconnected and supporting control systems to prove the functionality and usefulness in this kind of production system.The paper presents the resulting five abstraction levels in the framework concept, from a production top view down to the signal exchange between the different resources in one production cell, together with additional features. The simulation proves the setup with Sequence Planner and the visual interface to work by extract and present process data from a running sequence

Early aspects: aspect-oriented requirements engineering and architecture design

This paper reports on the third Early Aspects: Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering and Architecture Design Workshop, which has been held in Lancaster, UK, on March 21, 2004. The workshop included a presentation session and working sessions in which the particular topics on early aspects were discussed. The primary goal of the workshop was to focus on challenges to defining methodical software development processes for aspects from early on in the software life cycle and explore the potential of proposed methods and techniques to scale up to industrial applications

Mechatronic Systems

Mechatronics, the synergistic blend of mechanics, electronics, and computer science, has evolved over the past twenty five years, leading to a novel stage of engineering design. By integrating the best design practices with the most advanced technologies, mechatronics aims at realizing high-quality products, guaranteeing at the same time a substantial reduction of time and costs of manufacturing. Mechatronic systems are manifold and range from machine components, motion generators, and power producing machines to more complex devices, such as robotic systems and transportation vehicles. With its twenty chapters, which collect contributions from many researchers worldwide, this book provides an excellent survey of recent work in the field of mechatronics with applications in various fields, like robotics, medical and assistive technology, human-machine interaction, unmanned vehicles, manufacturing, and education. We would like to thank all the authors who have invested a great deal of time to write such interesting chapters, which we are sure will be valuable to the readers. Chapters 1 to 6 deal with applications of mechatronics for the development of robotic systems. Medical and assistive technologies and human-machine interaction systems are the topic of chapters 7 to 13.Chapters 14 and 15 concern mechatronic systems for autonomous vehicles. Chapters 16-19 deal with mechatronics in manufacturing contexts. Chapter 20 concludes the book, describing a method for the installation of mechatronics education in schools