Enhancing learning experience by collaborative industrial projects

This paper presents how collaborative industrial project are embedded into engineering curriculum at two departments: School of Science and the School of Engineering, at RMIT University, Australia. We introduce general structure of the industrial projects as Work Integrated Learning (WIL) modules, as well as provide a number of examples of recently completed projects. Industrial summer projects, which were running in the years 2015/16 in collaboration with ANZ, ABB, Alfred Hospital, etc., were pipelined with final year projects from the School of Engineering as well as with the Software Engineering Projects (Bachelor and Master level) from the School of Science. The goal of these projects was to enable continuity of activities as per industry requirements and enhance learning experience, as well as, employability of the students. All the projects were successfully completed, also receiving positive feedback from industry partners. Some of the projects led to student's employment within the companies that have sponsored the projects. With this approach, Future Designers Grant from the Department of State Development, Business and Innovation, Victoria, was efficiently implemented and a new product developed. After receiving Bosch Venture Forum Award in Germany, in June 2015 industry collaboration has extended to new partner, School of Science and activities continued over the summer. New design is implanted as well as large number of improvements

Visualization, simulation and validation for cyber-virtual systems

We present our framework for visualization, simulation and validation of cyber-physical systems in industrial automation during development, operation and maintenance. System models may represent an existing physical part - for example an existing robot installation - and a software simulated part - for example a possible future extension of the physical industrial automation setup. We call such systems cyber-virtual systems. Here, we present our VxLab infrastructure for visualization using combined large screens and its applications in industrial automation. The methodology for simulation and validation motivated in this paper is based on this infrastructure. We are targeting scenarios, where industrial sites which may be in remote locations are modeled, simulated and visualized. Modeling, simulation and the visualization can be done from different locations anywhere in the world. Here, we are also concentrating on software modeling challenges related to cyber-virtual systems and simulation, testing, validation and verification techniques applied to them. Software models of industrial sites require behavioral models of both human and machine oriented aspects such as workflows and the components of the industrial sites such as models for tools, robots, workpieces and other machinery as well as communication and sensor facilities. Furthermore, facilitating collaboration between sites and stakeholders, experts and operators is an important application of our work