Agile Testing and Monitoring of Industrial Processes (id 7249)

 

Objectives:

 

Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) are the most common devices for integrating and controlling industrial processes. Despite having standard programming languages, it is still time consuming their direct programming. Using higher level programming languages, as IO Petri nets, followed by the translation to the PLC languages, is a convenient way to create PLC programs. Since PLC standard languages do not have all the features of Petri nets, in some cases the PLC implementation may not be exactly the desired one. Using external hardware devices, which monitor the PLC inputs and outputs during a verification stage, is promising way to go.

 

The main objectives of the work are the following:

- Develop one digital (binary) interface between one Arduino and one PLC

- Use the Arduino for logging, along time, the input and output binary signals of the PLC

- Identify simple Discrete Event Systems (observable, described by a small number of states)

 

Requirements (grades, required courses, etc):

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Localization:

ISR / IST

 

Observations:

 

Previous works provide good starting points for the thesis. In particular a number of hardware prototypes already exist, together with a number of system models already available in a database.

 

This work is conducted in collaboration with the company Inocam, responsible for the engineering design of industrial machines used in the footwear industry.

 

More information about this project:

http://users.isr.ist.utl.pt/~jag/msc/msc_2017_2018.html