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 [CourseIndAuto19]
References:
-
[CourseIndAuto19]
Course on Industrial Automation, MEEC / IST, 2019 / 2020 http://users.isr.ist.utl.pt/~jag/courses/api19b/api1920.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