Automated component-handling system for education and research in Mechatronics

Published ArticleMechatronic practitioners are engaged in the assembly and maintenance of complex machines, plants and systems in the engineering sector or in organisations which purchase and operate such mechatronic systems. Mechatronics, often described as the synergy of mechanical and computer systems together with electronic technologies, is increasingly being singled out as a core focus by both the education and business sectors. This international trend is also evident in South Africa and Engineering Faculties now have to provide students with the opportunity not only to acquire theoretical knowledge in Mechatronics but also to develop skills in implementing and designing mechatronics systems

Solving planning problems with Drools Planner a tutorial

Published ArticlePlanning problems are frequently encountered in everyday situations. The brute force approach of evaluating every possible solution for any medium size planning problem is just not feasible. Drools Planner is an open source Java library developed to help solve planning problems by using meta-heuristic algorithms. Drools Planner uses the Drools Expert (rule engine) for score calculation to greatly reduce the complexity and effort required to write scalable constraints in a declarative manner. This paper presents an introduction to Drools Planner, how it can be used to solve problems and concludes with an example scenario

Validating a reconfigurable assembly system utilizing virtual commissioning

Published ArticleSouth African manufacturing companies today need to be more sophisticated technologically to compete for global markets. The latest trend in automation and manufacturing emerges in the form of reconfigurable systems. The aim of this paper is to show the development of a reconfigurable assembly system and using virtual commissioning to plan, validate and optimize it. To achieve this "DELMIA" software was used to create a virtual simulation environment to verify an assembly cell from such a system as a case study. Simulations were conducted to verify software functions, device movements and operations, and the control software of the system. As a result, it was found that virtual commissioning is an excellent tool for predicting how the system will function, verifying system code early, and rectifying design flaws. This will enable manufacturing companies to be more competitive, ensure increased productivity, save time and ensure them an advantage over their competition

Final implementation of an improved OPC data logging system in an in a automation environment

Published ArticleThis paper will discuss the final implementation of an Improved OPC data logging system and its improvements over the original. The improved solution focused on the hardware, software and administrative components of the system; taking the reliability and performance of each component into consideration. The software components include the database, the data acquisition and logging client application (DALC) and the various OPC servers; the hardware component includes the servers that will run the software components, power management and Redundant Array of Independents Disks (RAID) technologies; and the administrative component includes implementing automated routines to backup the important data and archive old logs

Enhanced P1500 Compliant Wrapper Suitable for Delay-Fault Testing of Embedded Cores

Continual advances in the manufacturing processes of integrated circuits provide designers the ability to create more complex and denser architectures and increased functionality on a single chip. The increased usage of embedded cores necessitates a core-based test strategy in which cores are also tested separately. The IEEE P1500 proposed standard for embedded core test (SECT) is a standard under development which aims is to improve the testing of core-based system chips. This paper deals with the enhancement of the test wrapper and wrapper cells to provide a structure to be able to test embedded cores for delay faults. This approach allows delay fault testing of cores by using the digital oscillation test method and the help of the enhanced elements while staying compliant to the P1500 standard

IMPACT OF DIFFERENT LOAD PROFILES ON SIZING AND PERFORMANCE OF A MICRO-HYDROKINETIC-BATTERY BASED HYBRID SYSTEM

Conference ProceedingsHydrokinetic hybrid systems are gaining more interest since hydrokinetic technology has proved to offer a cost-effective electrification solution. Very few research studies on sizing and optimization of micro-hydrokinetic-battery (MHK-B) based hybrid systems have been done. However, the authors did not explore the impact of different load profiles on optimal sizing and performance of the MHK-B hybrid system. In this study, the impact brought by different load profiles such as residential, commercial and industrial sectors on sizing and operation of a river based MHK-B hybrid system is investigated using Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewable (HOMER) software. HOMER Pro version 3.6.1 has been selected since it is equipped with hydrokinetic turbine module. The flowing water resource data obtained from a typical river of South Africa has been used as an input. Sample of load profile curves for residential, commercial, industrial have been used to estimate the daily load demands. The optimum configuration results indicated that for the same daily energy consumption, the type of a load profile affects the battery storage capacity, hydrokinetic turbine size, inverter and rectifier operational hours as well as the annual excess energy for the MHK-B hybrid system

External Thermal Camera Exposure Control Workaround for Low-Cost Security Thermal Cameras

Published ArticleThermal cameras have an advantage in feature extraction, namely the ability to show only objects with/according to temperature; for example, a person with a higher temperature than the immediate surroundings could be extracted from the background with simple machine vision techniques. The problem with industrial thermal cameras for security use is that they are very expensive. A solution would be to obtain less expensive security thermal cameras. However, a problem inherent to these cameras is their automatic self-calibration system. This is problematic in fixed constant comparator programs. This paper proposes a calibration system to regulate the optimal exposure parameter for the analysis of a single, possibly under- or over-exposed image. This calibration system provides an optimal exposure reference for the camera, based on image clarity and reduced image noise. The phenomenon of image noise is caused by under- or over-exposed images. To estimate the exposure quality in the presence of saturated and unsaturated pixels, a temperature-controlled surface is introduced into the camera's field of view. The camera's calibrating point is aimed at this surface; therefore, this is a reference temperature for the camera. Experimental results are presented comparing different reference temperatures to target visibility. The experiment was conducted in a controlled environment

Grid-interactive micro-hydrokinetic with pumped-hydro storage: The case study of three South African demand sectors

Conference ProceedingsThis paper investigates the operation of different demand sector such as residential, commercial and industrial load profiles when supplied with a grid tied micro-hydrokinetic pumped-hydro storage (MHK-PHS) hybrid system. The aim is to explore the demand sector which is more favorable to the proposed grid-tied MHK-PHS hybrid system under the time-of-use (TOU) tariff scheme. Hence, the optimum configuration of the proposed MHK-PHS hybrid system is determined in order to investigate the effect of each demand sector on sizing and operation of the hybrid system. HOMER Pro Version 3.6.1 has been used to perform the optimization under TOU tariff scheme. The results have shown that the industrial load sector incur the lowest cost of energy at the highest capital cost as opposed to the residential and commercial load sectors. However, from economic perspective, the residential demand sector proved to be more favorable to the proposed hybrid system due to the lowest net present cost (NPV). For each load demand sector, HOMER led to oversizing constraint of the hybrid system by not recharging the storage system after use