Ambiente computacional paradesenvolvimento de aplicações de controladores lógicos programáveis baseado em linguagens SFC e ST

This work proposes an environment for programming programmable logic controllers applied to oil wells with BCP type method of artificially lifting. The environment will have an editor based in the diagram of sequential functions for programming of PLCs. This language was chosen due to the fact of being high-level and accepted by the international standard IEC 61131-3. The use of these control programs in real PLC will be possible with the use of an intermediate level of language based on XML specification PLCopen T6 XML. For the testing and validation of the control programs, an area should be available for viewing variables obtained through communication with a real PLC. Thus, the main contribution of this work is to develop a computational environment that allows: modeling, testing and validating the controls represented in SFC and applied in oil wells with BCP type method of artificially lifting

Detecção de interface em tanques de petróleo usando transmissores de nível e controladores Fuzzy

This work presents a proposal to detect interface in atmospheric oil tanks by installing a differential pressure level transmitter to infer the oil-water interface. The main goal of this project is to maximize the quantity of free water that is delivered to the drainage line by controlling the interface. A Fuzzy Controller has been implemented by using the interface transmitter as the Process Variable. Two ladder routine was generated to perform the control. One routine was developed to calculate the error and error variation. The other was generate to develop the fuzzy controller itself. By using rules, the fuzzy controller uses these variables to set the output. The output is the position variation of the drainage valve. Although the ladder routine was implemented into an Allen Bradley PLC, Control Logix family it can be implemented into any brand of PLCs

Ambiente para avaliação de controladores fuzzy aplicados ao método de elevação artificial por bombeio centrífugo submerso

From their early days, Electrical Submergible Pumping (ESP) units have excelled in lifting much greater liquid rates than most of the other types of artificial lift and developed by good performance in wells with high BSW, in onshore and offshore environments. For all artificial lift system, the lifetime and frequency of interventions are of paramount importance, given the high costs of rigs and equipment, plus the losses coming from a halt in production. In search of a better life of the system comes the need to work with the same efficiency and security within the limits of their equipment, this implies the need for periodic adjustments, monitoring and control. How is increasing the prospect of minimizing direct human actions, these adjustments should be made increasingly via automation. The automated system not only provides a longer life, but also greater control over the production of the well. The controller is the brain of most automation systems, it is inserted the logic and strategies in the work process in order to get you to work efficiently. So great is the importance of controlling for any automation system is expected that, with better understanding of ESP system and the development of research, many controllers will be proposed for this method of artificial lift. Once a controller is proposed, it must be tested and validated before they take it as efficient and functional. The use of a producing well or a test well could favor the completion of testing, but with the serious risk that flaws in the design of the controller were to cause damage to oil well equipment, many of them expensive. Given this reality, the main objective of the present work is to present an environment for evaluation of fuzzy controllers for wells equipped with ESP system, using a computer simulator representing a virtual oil well, a software design fuzzy controllers and a PLC. The use of the proposed environment will enable a reduction in time required for testing and adjustments to the controller and evaluated a rapid diagnosis of their efficiency and effectiveness. The control algorithms are implemented in both high-level language, through the controller design software, such as specific language for programming PLCs, Ladder Diagram language.

Impacto de las características de la red eléctrica en canales MIMO PLC domésticos

The recent release of indoor Power Line Communications (PLC) specifications with Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) capabilities has significantly increased the bit rates achieved in these channels. However, the performance reached by the use of these methods may differ from one location to another due to the heterogeneous nature of the domestic power grid. In this work, a closer look at the relation between channel performance and the power grid cabling is taken. To that end, some channel features like attenuation, spatial correlation and capacity are analyzed by means of a set of 50 simulated channel topologies in the frequency band from 1 to 80 MHz.

Utformning av tak och möjligheter med automation av takstolstillverkning i trä

Purpose: The purpose of this work is to increase the possibilities of designing building components for specific demands to increase the building’s value, and to investigate how the possibilities can be affected by automating the production process. Method: The theoretical framework, which this study is based on, was collected using literature studies and was thereafter combined with the empirics, which were retrieved from qualitative methods as interviews and planned observations. A case study was made of the building Ormhuset in Jönköping. Findings: The objective of this work is to investigate the possibilities for designing roofs by using new automation methods for the production process of wooden roof structures. This study implies that parametric design can be used to generate new innovative shapes and designs that are optimised according to specific criteria. Furthermore, an increased use of automation in the production process of wooden roof trusses result in cheaper roof trusses, regardless of their shapes. The generated optimized designs are therefore cheaper and easier to produce using more automation in the production process. Implications: If parametric design is used, almost any kind of shapes can be generated and optimised. To ensure manufacturability of a design, an early connection between architect and manufacturer is important. Furthermore, increased use of automation can lead to easier and faster production of roof trusses and investing in more automation can be relevant for companies with large production volumes. Using digital files to control the manufacturing machines is time saving. There are alternative manufacturing methods for advanced roof structurers in wood, which are better suited for production, which cannot be rationalized as for roof trusses. Constraints for increased automation are often a high investment cost and limited space. Limitations: If the study is performed on another case than Ormhuset and with other respondents, the result might have differed but could be similar, why this study is not generally valid but only shows one possible outcome.

Examining Levels of Automation in the Wood Processing Industry - A case study

Companies operating in the wood processing industry need to increase their productivity by implementing automation technologies in their production systems. An increasing global competition and rising raw material prizes challenge their competitiveness. Yet, too extensive automation brings risks such as a deterioration in situation awareness and operator deskilling. The concept of Levels of Automation is generally seen as means to achieve a balanced task allocation between the operators’ skills and competences and the need for automation technology relieving the humans from repetitive or hazardous work activities. The aim of this thesis was to examine to what extent existing methods for assessing Levels of Automation in production processes are applicable in the wood processing industry when focusing on an improved competitiveness of production systems. This was done by answering the following research questions (RQ): RQ1: What method is most appropriate to be applied with measuring Levels of Automation in the wood processing industry? RQ2: How can the measurement of Levels of Automation contribute to an improved competitiveness of the wood processing industry’s production processes? Literature reviews were used to identify the main characteristics of the wood processing industry affecting its automation potential and appropriate assessment methods for Levels of Automation in order to answer RQ1. When selecting the most suitable method, factors like the relevance to the target industry, application complexity or operational level the method is penetrating were important. The DYNAMO++ method, which covers both a rather quantitative technical-physical and a more qualitative social-cognitive dimension, was seen as most appropriate when taking into account these factors. To answer RQ 2, a case study was undertaken at a major Swedish manufacturer of interior wood products to point out paths how the measurement of Levels of Automation contributes to an improved competitiveness of the wood processing industry. The focus was on the task level on shop floor and concrete improvement suggestions were elaborated after applying the measurement method for Levels of Automation. Main aspects considered for generalization were enhancements regarding ergonomics in process design and cognitive support tools for shop-floor personnel through task standardization. Furthermore, difficulties regarding the automation of grading and sorting processes due to the heterogeneous material properties of wood argue for a suitable arrangement of human intervention options in terms of work task allocation.  The application of a modified version of DYNAMO++ reveals its pros and cons during a case study which covers a high operator involvement in the improvement process and the distinct predisposition of DYNAMO++ to be applied in an assembly system.

Marketing Automation – en studie om ett modernt marknadsföringsverktyg i en svensk kontext

I takt med att digitala medier har utvecklats under de senaste åren har köpresan för-ändrats till att kunder idag i ett mycket senare skede släpper in leverantörer i dialogen. Marketing Automation adresserar den problembilden och har växt fram som en brygga mellan sälj- och marknadsprocessen. Systemet ger möjlighet att effektivt och automatiserat utveckla leads (potentiell kund). Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur Marketing Automation påverkar sälj- och marknadsprocesserna. Vilka förutsättningar krävs för en implementation? Ökar lönsamheten? Vi har därför valt att i det teoretiska ramverket beskriva Marketing Automation och bland annat undersöka om ett införande av Marketing Automation medför att sälj- och marknadsorganisationerna slås samman till en organisatorisk enhet. I studien har vi dessutom kartlagt och beskrivit den moderna köpresan och det som ibland kallas intäktsorganisationen. Vi har funnit att Marketing Automation är relativt outforskat i en svensk kontext. För att utröna om teorin, som i stor utsträckning bygger på internationell litteratur och internationella undersökningar, går att överföra till en svensk kontext har vi valt att genomföra en kvalitativ studie i form av en fallstudie av leverantörer av produkter och tjänster inom området samt företag, med den gemensamma nämnaren att de re-presenterar ett kunskapsintensivt erbjudande och har implementerat lösningar för Marketing Automation. I vår analys finns en samsyn mellan leverantörer och kunder i förutsättningar för ett införande, men vi kan även se hur resultaten divergerar och pekar på implikationer, inte minst avseende måluppfyllnad och samverkan mellan sälj- och marknadsorgani-sationerna. Vår slutsats visar bland annat att Marketing Automation kan leda till uppfyllnad av mjuka värden i företaget men har inte bevisats leda till ökad lönsamhet per automatik. Vi ser lönsamhet och Return on Investment (ROI) som ett område som bör utforskas vidare.

SCADA configuration and control modes implementation on an experimental water supply canal

In the last years, digital controllers became a very interesting alternative (low costs and higher accuracy) to the analogue or to hydrodynamic traditional controllers in water supply canal automation, in order to match water supply to water demands. This kind of hydraulic systems needs particular research for control applications because they are big scale systems, open and characterized by big delays and great inertia. This paper presents several digital control modes tested in an experimental canal that will be used as a research platform on the automatic canal control domain. The canal operation and their control modes selection are supervised by a SCADA system developed and configured for this particular canal.

The impact of phosphoinositide metabolic enzymes in glioblastoma: a tale of phosphoinositide-specific phospholipase C PLCβ1 and 5-phosphatase SKIP

Background: Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is one of the deadliest and most aggressive form of primary brain tumor. Unfortunately, current GBM treatment therapies are not effective in treating GBM patients. They usually experience very poor prognosis with a median survival of approximately 12 months. Only 3-5% survive up to 3 years or more. A large-scale gene profile study revealed that several genes involved in essential cellular processes are altered in GBM, thus, explaining why existing therapies are not effective. The survival of GBM patients depends on understanding the molecular and key signaling events associated with these altered physiological processes in GBM. Phosphoinositides (PI) form just a tiny fraction of the total lipid content in humans, however they are implicated in almost all essential biological processes, such as acting as second messengers in spatio-temporal regulation of cell signaling, cytoskeletal reorganization, cell adhesion, migration, apoptosis, vesicular trafficking, differentiation, cell cycle and post-translational modifications. Interestingly, these essential processes are altered in GBM. More importantly, incoming reports have associated PI metabolism, which is mediated by several PI phosphatases such as SKIP, lipases such as PLCβ1, and other kinases, to regulate GBM associated cellular processes. Even as PLCβ1 and SKIP are involved in regulating aberrant cellular processes in several other cancers, very few studies, of which majority are in-silico-based, have focused on the impact of PLCβ1 and SKIP in GBM. Hence, it is important to employ clinical, in vitro, and in vivo GBM models to define the actual impact of PLCβ1 and SKIP in GBM. AIM: Since studies of PLCβ1 and SKIP in GBM are limited, this study aimed at determining the pathological impact of PI metabolic enzymes, PLCB1 and SKIP, in GBM patient samples, GBM cell line models, and xenograft models for SKIP. Results: For the first time, this study confirmed through qPCR that PLCβ1 gene expression is lower in human GBM patient samples. Moreover, PLCβ1 gene expression inversely correlates with pathological grades of glioma; it decreases as glioma grades increases or worsens. Silencing PLCβ1 in U87MG GBM cells produces a dual impact in GBM by participating in both pro-tumoral and anti-tumoral roles. PLCβ1 knockdown cells were observed to have more migratory abilities, increased cell to extracellular matrix (ECM) adhesion, transition from epithelial phenotype to mesenchymal phenotype through the upregulation of EMT transcription factors Twist1 and Slug, and mesenchymal marker, vimentin. On the other hand, p-Akt and p-mTOR protein expression were downregulated in PLCβ1 knockdown cells. Thus, the oncogenic pathway PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway is inhibited during PLCβ1 knockdown. Consistently, cell viability in PLCβ1 knockdown cells were significantly decreased compared to controls. As for SKIP, this study demonstrated that about 48% of SKIP colocalizes with nuclear PtdIns(4,5)P2 to nuclear speckles and that SKIP knockdown alters nuclear PtdIns(4,5)P2 in a cell-type dependent manner. In addition, SKIP silencing increased tumor volume and weight in xenografts than controls by reducing apoptosis and increasing viability. All in all, these data confirm that PLCβ1 and SKIP are involved in GBM pathology and a complete understanding of their roles in GBM may be beneficial.

Task analysis for HMI design. Level of automation study of aircraft navigation functions

Advancements in technology have enabled increasingly sophisticated automation to be introduced into the flight decks of modern aircraft. Generally, this automation was added to accomplish worthy objectives such as reducing flight crew workload, adding additional capability, or increasing fuel economy. Automation is necessary due to the fact that not all of the functions required for mission accomplishment in today’s complex aircraft are within the capabilities of the unaided human operator, who lacks the sensory capacity to detect much of the information required for flight. To a large extent, these objectives have been achieved. Nevertheless, despite all the benefits from the increasing amounts of highly reliable automation, vulnerabilities do exist in flight crew management of automation and Situation Awareness (SA). Issues associated with flight crew management of automation include: • Pilot understanding of automation’s capabilities, limitations, modes, and operating principles and techniques. • Differing pilot decisions about the appropriate automation level to use or whether to turn automation on or off when they get into unusual or emergency situations. • Human-Machine Interfaces (HMIs) are not always easy to use, and this aspect could be problematic when pilots experience high workload situations. • Complex automation interfaces, large differences in automation philosophy and implementation among different aircraft types, and inadequate training also contribute to deficiencies in flight crew understanding of automation.

Towards automation of constellation management with analytical models for collision avoidance

The growing interest for constellation of small, less expensive satellites is bringing space junk and traffic management to the attention of space community. At the same time, the continuous quest for more efficient propulsion systems put the spotlight on electric (low thrust) propulsion as an appealing solution for collision avoidance. Starting with an overview of the current techniques for conjunction assessment and avoidance, we then highlight the possible problems when a low thrust propulsion is used. The need for accurate propagation model shows up from the conducted simulations. Thus, aiming at propagation models with low computational burden, we study the available models from the literature and propose an analytical alternative to improve propagation accuracy. The model is then tested in the particular case of a tangential maneuver. Results show that the proposed solution significantly improve on state of the art methods and is a good candidate to be used in collision avoidance operations. For instance to propagate satellite uncertainty or optimizing avoidance maneuver when conjunction occurs within few (3-4) orbits from measurements time.

1° level of automation: the effectiveness of adaptive cruise control on driving and visual behaviour

The research activities have allowed the analysis of the driver assistance systems, called Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) in relation to road safety. The study is structured according to several evaluation steps, related to definite on-site tests that have been carried out with different samples of users, according to their driving experience with the ACC. The evaluation steps concern: •The testing mode and the choice of suitable instrumentation to detect the driver’s behaviour in relation to the ACC. •The analysis modes and outputs to be obtained, i.e.: - Distribution of attention and inattention; - Mental workload; - The Perception-Reaction Time (PRT), the Time To Collision (TTC) and the Time Headway (TH). The main purpose is to assess the interaction between vehicle drivers and ADAS, highlighting the inattention and variation of the workloads they induce regarding the driving task. The research project considered the use of a system for monitoring visual behavior (ASL Mobile Eye-XG - ME), a powerful GPS that allowed to record the kinematic data of the vehicle (Racelogic Video V-BOX) and a tool for reading brain activity (Electroencephalographic System - EEG). Just during the analytical phase, a second and important research objective was born: the creation of a graphical interface that would allow exceeding the frame count limit, making faster and more effective the labeling of the driver’s points of view. The results show a complete and exhaustive picture of the vehicle-driver interaction. It has been possible to highlight the main sources of criticalities related to the user and the vehicle, in order to concretely reduce the accident rate. In addition, the use of mathematical-computational methodologies for the analysis of experimental data has allowed the optimization and verification of analytical processes with neural networks that have made an effective comparison between the manual and automatic methodology.

Integration of ROS for the control of industrial robotic systems in a proprietary environment

The paper deals with the integration of ROS, in the proprietary environment of the Marchesini Group company, for the control of industrial robotic systems. The basic tools of this open-source software are deeply studied to model a full proprietary Pick and Place manipulator inside it, and to develop custom ROS nodes to calculate trajectories; speaking of which, the URDF format is the standard to represent robots in ROS and the motion planning framework MoveIt offers user-friendly high-level methods. The communication between ROS and the Marchesini control architecture is established using the OPC UA standard; the tasks computed are transmitted offline to the PLC, supervisor controller of the physical robot, because the performances of the protocol don’t allow any kind of active control by ROS. Once the data are completely stored at the Marchesini side, the industrial PC makes the real robot execute a trajectory computed by MoveIt, so that it replicates the behaviour of the simulated manipulator in Rviz. Multiple experiments are performed to evaluate in detail the potential of ROS in the planning of movements for the company proprietary robots. The project ends with a small study regarding the use of ROS as a simulation platform. First, it is necessary to understand how a robotic application of the company can be reproduced in the Gazebo real world simulator. Then, a ROS node extracts information and examines the simulated robot behaviour, through the subscription to specific topics.

Analysis and development of interface components and procedures for the design and commissioning toolchains in automation systems

The objective of the thesis project, developed within the Line Control & Software Engineering team of G.D company, is to analyze and identify the appropriate tool to automate the HW configuration process using Beckhoff technologies by importing data from an ECAD tool. This would save a great deal of time, since the I/O topology created as part of the electrical planning is presently imported manually in the related SW project of the machine. Moreover, a manual import is more error-prone because of human mistake than an automatic configuration tool. First, an introduction about TwinCAT 3, EtherCAT and Automation Interface is provided; then, it is analyzed the official Beckhoff tool, XCAD Interface, and the requirements on the electrical planning to use it: the interface is realized by means of the AutomationML format. Finally, due to some limitations observed, the design and implementation of a company internal tool is performed. Tests and validation of the tool are performed on a sample production line of the company.

Acquisition of Vibration Signals for Predictive Maintenance: a Practical Case

As predictive maintenance becomes more and more relevant in industrial environment, the possible range of applications for this maintenance strategy grows. The progresses in components technology and their reduction in price, together with the late years' advances in machine learning and in computational power, are making the implementation of predictive maintenance possible in plants where it would have previously been unreasonably costly. This is leading major pharmaceutical industries to explore the possibility of the application of condition monitoring systems on progressively less and less critical equipment. The focus of this thesis is on the implementation of a system to gather vibrational data from the motors installed in a pre-existing machine using off-the-shelf components. The final goal for the system is to provide the necessary vibration data, in the form of frequency spectra, to a machine learning system developed by IMA Digital, which will be leveraging such data to predict possible upcoming faults and to give the final client all the information necessary to plan maintenance activity according to the estimated machine condition.