UNIFIED MODELING OF CONTROL SOFTWARE AND PHYSICAL PLANTS

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Online Smooth Trajectory Planning for Mobile Robots by Means of Nonlinear Filters

The paper presents a nonlinear filtering technique that can be adopted to generate smooth trajectories for mobile robotic applications. The proposed trajectory planner can be fully executed online by the robot control system, thanks to its inherently discrete-time behavior and to its limited computational requirement. The outputs of the nonlinear filter used as a trajectory planner include the derivatives of the desired position in the cartesian plane up to the third order. This allows the implementation of feedback linearization control schemes that can transform the dynamics of a mobile robot in a double chain of three integrators, exploiting the highest derivative of the filter’s output as a feedforward action. Finally, the paper reports experimental results obtained by the full implementation of the proposed trajectory planning and control scheme on a real unicycle-like robot

Behavioural inheritance in object-oriented models for mechatronic systems

Abstract: This paper describes a formal framework for Object-Oriented (O-O) modelling of mechatronic systems, whose main contribution is, on the one hand, to unify the modelling approaches for dynamical systems and for industrial control software and, on the other hand, to provide a definition of inheritance, a cardinal concept in object-orientation, which emphasises the behavioural conformity of basic and derived classes of objects. The proposed framework exploits the coalgebraic description of software artefacts to provide a connection between the behavioural approach for modelling dynamical systems and the O-O approach for software modelling and design. In particular, our definition of inheritance aims to allow control engineers to apply the design by extension methodology, widely used in software engineering, to the development of mechatronic components for manufacturing systems

SaBot: A scalable architecture for Web-enabled Mobile Robots

The paper presents the architecture of an experimental mobile robotic platform, which has beendesigned specifying interoperability between multiple robots as a main objective. In particular,novel software technologies based onWeb services have been exploited in order to support mobilerobots with efficient and extensible messaging, data-sharing and distributed task managementcapabilities. The basic components of the proposed architecture have been implemented andtested on a demonstrative robotic setup, that will be fully described in the paper. However, theaim of the proposal is to contribute to future Web-based interoperability between mobile robotsemployed in either industrial or human service applications

Modelli orientati agli oggetti per sistemi con dinamiche ibride

Nel presente articolo viene presentata una metodologia per la modellazione el' analisi di processi industriali, il cui scopo e quello di unificare tutti gli aspetti concettuali coinvolti nello sviluppo delle logiche di controllo. In particolare, I'approccio proposto integra i concetti delle tecniche di modellazione orientate agli oggetti, ampiamente note agli sviluppatori software, con i concetti fondamentali dei Bond Graph, un linguaggio di modellazione per sistemi fisici di natura eterogenea basato sulle interazioni energetiche fra componenti basilari.L' articolo mostra inoltre come i modelli ottenuti con il metodo presentato possano essere analizzati con metodiformali per la verifica di sistemi ibridi, cioe sistemi nei quali dinamiche tempo-continue interagiscono condinamiche discrete e regole logiche

An engineering process for the mechatronic development of industrial automation systems

This paper deals with the development process of an industrial application for the manufacturing of artefacts and products. In particular, a new engineering process tackling the whole machine life-cycle, from the user requirements capture, the project conceptual development to the final machine delivery and acceptance tests, is presented. The process is particularly tailored to the development of automated machines for the beverage and liquid food packaging market, and it is illustrated with a real case study developed in cooperation with a market leader machine manufacturer

A SysML based methodology for manufacturing system modeling and design

This paper describes a modeling methodology to support the design process of complex systems. The main challenge in modern industrial applications is the sheer volume of data involved in the design process. While using high-level abstraction is necessary to manage this data and analyze the system “as a whole,” designers need also to retain all the low-level information of the system, in order to be able to perform optimizations and modifications at later times. The solution proposed here is to use a hierarchy of models, each one describing the system at different levels of abstraction, and arrange them in such a way that it is possible to easily “map” each level onto the others. The topmost layer of the system description is expressed in System Modeling Language, a general-purpose modeling language based on Unified Modeling Language

A Component-Based Software Architecture for Control and Simulation of Robotic Manipulators

The paper describes a software architecture for control and simulation of a generic robotic manipulator. The algorithmic part of the system is implemented using the Orocos component-based framework and its related library for robotic applications, while the graphical animation of the robot is developed with Blender. The proposed control and simulation framework is modular, reconfigurable and computationally efficient. Moreover, it can be seamlessly integrated into a more complex control architecture for a complete intelligent robotic system

Fault Diagnosis Strategies for a Simulated Nonlinear Aircraft Model

In this work, different procedures for sensor Fault Detection and Isolation (FDI) applied to a simulated model of a commercial aircraft are presented. The main point of the paper regards the design of two FDI schemes based on a linear Polynomial Method (PM) and the NonLinear Geometric Approach (NLGA). The obtained results highlight a good trade–off between solution complexity and achieved performances. The FDI schemes are applied to the aircraft model, characterised by tight–coupled longitudinal and lateral dynamics. The properties of the residual generators are experimentally investigated and verified by simulating a general aircraft reference trajectory. The overall performance of the developed FDI schemes are analysed in the presence of turbulence, measurement and model errors. Comparisons with other FDI methods based on Neural Networks (NN) and Unknown Input Kalman Filter (UIKF) are finally reported

Object-Oriented Modeling of Complex Mechatronic Components for the Manufacturing Industry

none5The advantages of object-oriented modeling, as modularity and reusability of components, are very important also for modeling manufacturing systems and not only for software development. Recently, a unified object-oriented approach for modeling both the logical and the physical part of a manufacturing machine has been proposed. In this paper, we show the effectiveness of this new modeling framework on an industrial application. The case study consists of the package forming unit of a filling machine for liquid food packaging, developed by Tetra Pak Carton Ambient S.p.a.mixedSECCHI C.; BONFE' M.; FANTUZZI C.; BORSARI R.; BORGHI D.Secchi, C.; Bonfe', Marcello; Fantuzzi, C.; Borsari, R.; Borghi, D