MSc dissertation proposal 2018/2019

PLC Training based on Applied Games

Objectives:

Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) are the most common devices for integrating and controlling industrial processes. Despite having standard hardware and programming languages, well established for more than two decades, it is still time-consuming training engineers to make use of the PLCs.

Nowadays one finds software tools which are promising to help training on PLC usage and programming. One such tool is [RealgamesWWW] which we want to explore in the freeware vein proposed by the authors together with a commercial version.

The objectives of the work are the following:

- Setting up a simulation project similar to the first project of the Industrial Automation course [CourseIndAuto17] using the public software provided in [RealgamesWWW]

- Setting up one or two additional setups combining simulated PLCs and a simulated environment using [RealgamesWWW]

- Exploring ways of connecting the simulation software of [RealgamesWWW] with real hardware, both in the aspects of using real PLCs or using other real devices

- Automating the process of PLC programming based on Discrete Event Systems modelling and implementation using tools of [CourseIndAuto17]

References:

- [CourseIndAuto17] Course on Industrial Automation, MEEC / IST, 2017 / 2018 http://users.isr.ist.utl.pt/~jag/courses/api17/api1718.html

- [RealGamesWWW] https://realgames.co/

Requirements (grades, required courses, etc):

Interest in creating and testing simulated environments, characterizing event systems and their control.

Localization:

ISR / IST

Observations:

Previous works provide good starting points for the thesis. In particular a number of thesis have been conducted on the use of PLCs, namely their interfacing to real devices and their programming based on higher level tools.

More information in:

http://isr.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/~jag/msc/msc_2018_2019.html