A Multidisciplinary PBL Robot Control Project in Automation and Electronic Engineering

This paper presents a multidisciplinary problem-based learning (PBL) project consisting of the development of a robot arm prototype and the implementation of its control system. The project is carried out as part of Industrial Informatics (II), a compulsory third-year course in the Automation and Electronic Engineering (AEE) degree program at the School of Engineering at Universitat Politècnica de València, València, Spain. The robot arm is a low-cost prototype, initially controlled with a joystick. The aim of the project is, first, to design and implement a full control system for the robot, including the necessary circuitry for microcomputer (ARM Cortex)-based control and, second, to pit the designed robot in competition against other students' robots. Incorporation of multidisciplinary PBL required changes in the organization of the course, which features various learning activities and their continuous evaluation; it also required knowledge of five other courses in the AEE program. PBL methodology is compared to a traditional method; the results obtained proved highly satisfactory. Moreover, the PBL robotic experience was highly rated by some 900 students.Hassan Mohamed, H.; Domínguez Montagud, CP.; Martínez Rubio, JM.; Perles Ivars, A.; Capella Hernández, JV.; Albaladejo Meroño, J. (2015). A Multidisciplinary PBL Robot Control Project in Automation and Electronic Engineering. IEEE Transactions on Education. 58(3):167-172. doi:10.1109/TE.2014.2348538S16717258

Distributed industrial control systems: a fault tolerant architecture

[EN] Nowadays, distributed architectures are the base of many manufacturing systems. Some aspects like fault-tolerance, system validation and design process are very important in the development of these systems. In this paper we study the dependability of three different architectures of a distributed system, and we show the development of both physical and logical fault injectors and the implementation of local performance monitors. We also study the impact of checkpointing mechanisms on the system performance in a control system based on a CAN network. Finally we propose a distributed system design methodology based on codesign. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.This article is sponsored by the Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnologia under project CICYT-TAP96-1090-C04-01Campelo Rivadulla, JC.; Rodríguez-Ballester, F.; Rubio Moreno, A.; Ors Carot, R.; Gil, P.; Lemus Zúñiga, LG.; Busquets Mataix, JV.... (1999). Distributed industrial control systems: a fault tolerant architecture. Microprocessors and Microsystems. 23(2):103-112. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0141-9331(99)00019-8S10311223

Using Industrial Computers to Design Advanced Industrial Informatics Systems

TEMPUS is the European Union (EU) programme that supports the modernisation and reform of Higher Education (HE) and promotes institutional cooperation that involves the EU and EU’s neighboring countries (PC). The PC includes Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Western Balkans and also the Mediterranean region. The Medis Project belongs to the TEMPUS framework. The Medis project that is described in this article develops in this context.This work was supported by the European Union under Grant “MEDIS” within the program TEMPUS.Busquets Mataix, JV.; Albaladejo Meroño, J.; Perles Ivars, A.; Capella Hernández, JV.; Domínguez Montagud, CP.; Martínez Rubio, JM.; Hassan Mohamed, H. (2015). Using Industrial Computers to Design Advanced Industrial Informatics Systems. En Engineering Experiences in the Design of Advanced Industrial Informatics Systems. Medis-Tempus. 6-11. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/60650S61

Ubiquitous E-Maintenance Proposal Based on the Integration of Mobile Devices and Cloud Computing

[EN] Most e-maintenance approaches are oriented to big industries and are prohibitive for modest industries. This paper proposes an architecture for e-maintenance that tries to solve this gap. This architecture defines two domains, the floor-shop and the cloud domain. In the floor-shop domain, a mobile device is connected to the system to be maintained by means of a tether-free process interface. On the other hand, the cloud domain provides the resources to improve the maintenance in instrumented manufacturing systems via Internet connection. Also, the mobile device is responsible for joining both domains through its Internet capabilities. The proposed architecture combines mobile devices, cloud computing and Internet connectivity, allowing fresh technicians to supply its lack of expertise, reducing maintenance task time and minimizing the expert technician dependency. The expert now changes his role because his physical presence at the floor-shop domain is not required, being his know-how incorporated to the system. The proposal is human-centric, providing an intuitive usability such as any typical smartphone app. The results show that it is feasible to reduce drastically the economic requirements for deploying complex e-maintenance infrastructures, increasing the quality of the maintenance and enabling the applicability to small factories where maintenance is mostly outsourced. This is translated to higher availability and productivity of the manufacturing plant.This work has been partially supported by Spanish MICINN project TIN2011-28435-C03-01.Capella Hernández, JV.; Perles Ivars, ÁF.; Martínez Rubio, JM.; Hassan Mohamed, H.; Domínguez Montagud, CP.; Albaladejo Meroño, J. (2012). Ubiquitous E-Maintenance Proposal Based on the Integration of Mobile Devices and Cloud Computing. Advanced Science Letters. 18:121-131. doi:10.1166/asl.2012.4875S1211311

Smartphone-based industrial informatics projects and laboratories

The use of IT technologies plays an important role in the training of future engineers. In this paper, smartphones and multimedia technologies are proposed as an innovative way to tackle the formation of students, at different levels, in the Industrial Informatics (II) subject of the Industrial Electronics Engineering (IEE) degree. II instructs future Engineers in the design of IT systems to control industrial processes. In the first level, smartphones are used to display a web-based multimedia tool that is implemented to register the lecture explanations regarding the design of II systems, so as it facilitates student to guide him/her self in the learning process. In the second level, the smartphone is proposed as the control system of a medium size industrial process (e.g., water tank). Since II uses a problem-based learning methodology (miniproject) to instruct the design of II systems, for each lecture, laboratory practices are tackled, and the solutions obtained are embedded in the smartphone to control the corresponding part of the miniproject. An application of the Smartphone multimedia tool is presented to show how students interact with the developed system. The successful evaluation of the proposed tools, by more than 900 IEE students during three years, is shown.This work was supported in part by the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain, under Grant 20090513-" Dynamizing the European Convergence Higher Education." Paper no. TII-11-308.Hassan Mohamed, H.; Martínez Rubio, JM.; Perles Ivars, ÁF.; Capella Hernández, JV.; Domínguez Montagud, CP.; Albaladejo Meroño, J. (2013). Smartphone-based industrial informatics projects and laboratories. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics. 9(1):557-566. https://doi.org/10.1109/TII.2012.2185806S5575669