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Solar Tracker Platform Development for Energy Efficiency Improvement of Photovoltaic Panels
1-6.Views:188Solar energy systems have emerged over the last decades as the cleanest and most abundant renewable energy resources available worldwide. Solar trackers are devices specially developed to enhance the energy efficiency of solar energy systems. This paper presents the design and implementation stages of a reconfigurable hardware technology-based two-axis solar tracker platform, specially conceived to improve the energy efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) panels. The main module of this platform is the NI-MyRIO ready-to-use development system built upon a high-performance Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) processor that controls the entire solar tracker unit. Optimal tracking of the sun movement and obtaining the maximal energy efficiency rate is achieved by simultaneous real-time controlling both the captured sunlight intensity and PV cell temperature magnitudes. In this way, a robust and versatile positioning system has been developed that performs a high precision and accurate tracking pathway. All the control algorithms are implemented there under the LabView graphical programming software toolkit. The final solution boosts in a useful and modularized tracking system that looks useful in a wide range of applications both in industrial and domestic project sites with different power scales.
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DC Motor Simulation with ARM Based Hardware in the Loop
1-3.Views:109Hardware in the loop testing is increasingly important product testing for cutting down time to market. In my previous article I identified the parameters of a DC motor control system using system identification. An implementation of the resulting transfer function was developed on an ARM based hardware in the loop system and has been verified against the original system. The results show that the hardware in the loop system produces responses within tolerance to the stimulus signals and can be used for testing of controlsystems.
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Designing an ATmega328 Microcontroller Based Gesture-controlled IoT UGV Unit and Creating a Camera System Using Linux Distribution
1-7.Views:235The topic of the research is the design and building of a UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle), which we can control wirelessly with a glove designed for this purpose. The design and use of this gesture-controlled robot can be observed in this summary. A camera will be installed on the robot unit, whose image we can query through the local network. Furthermore, the hardware and software for this camera system will be described as well.
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Last Generation Mechatronics: a Two-level Platform-based Reconfigurable Technology Approach
1-7.Views:124As is well known mechatronic systems currently being designed and developed are often difficult multidisciplinary undertakings. Based on the intrinsic coupling of different implementation technologies, efficient design of mechatronic systems is of primordial importance for development of next generation industrial products. This paper is focused to current and future technological trends aimed to improve the design and implementation processes of mechatronic systems in an increasingly harsh industrial environment. Special attention is dedicated to introduction of the two-level platform-based reconfigurable technology approach. This strategy efficiently combines major advantages of both the hardware and software platform-based development trends in modern mecatronic systems. In order to support the unfolded theoretical arguments a last generation and versatile mechatronic system development is presented and discussed in the paper. The mentioned trends can be used as rough orientation for future mechatronic systems research and implementation activities.
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Reconfigurable Hardware Technology Application in Buildings Supervising and Monitoring Systems
1-6.Views:126Due to the continuously increasing demand for more comfortable residential or commercial buildings in the last decades the researches in the so called “intelligent buildings” topic has emerged as one of the most challenging and high ranked engineering task. Consumers also require a higher level of security, supervision, and control of the buildings according to a large scale of user needs. These expectations face building automation and supervising system developers with a challenging problem, difficult to approach with classical methods or strategies. Therefore, this paper is focused to outline novel facilities and solutions offered by the current level microelectronic technologies in building automation. In the first step of this endeavor the benefits and advantages of the reconfigurable hardware systems is highlighted and outlined. Then a concrete building automation and supervising system implementation in hardware reconfigurable technology is presented and detailed. The main unit of this system has been built upon a Genesys Virtex-5 FPGA-based development board, as a high speed, parallel, and distributed computing reconfigurable unit. The software modules for building supervising and monitoring purposes embed last generation MicroBlaze technology which allows fast and convenient implementation of sophisticated control algorithms. The result of the entire development is a powerful and versatile system representing a well suitable solution for the most sophisticated and demanding customer needs in building supervising and monitoring applications.
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The Intelligent Space Modeled as a Cyber-Physical System
1-6.Views:173According to a general rule definition, the intelligent space (iSpace) is defined as a location (or space) provided with electronic sensor networks that enable the considered environment with intelligent behaviors. As a result, the considered space will be able to perceive stimulus around them and to understand events that happen its near surrounding. Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) are building blocks in Industry 4.0 that links digital technology and the physical environment in an industrial context. They combine intelligent physical objects and systems on a high level of functions integration. This paper emphasizes the main idea that intelligent spaces may be also modeled as complex cyber-physical systems, as well. This approach has been developed by discussing the theoretical basis of both the iSpaces and CPSs, respectively unfolding a short comparison between their basic behaviors. As a concrete example, the CPS model of a given iSpace framework is presented and discussed widely in the paper. This model has been experimented by using a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) processor-based ready-to-use development systems and software technologies that handles reconfigurable hardware technology. The implementation proves that the developed CPS model is well feasible and expresses in all the main behaviors and functions of iSpaces. It is also mentioned that the actual stage of the technological development terms and scientific areas related to iSpaces and CPSs overlaps. In fact, this is not surprising at all by considering nowadays evidence that iSpaces are widely present and shared components in modern manufactory processes that are an inherent part of Industry 4.0 vision and reality.
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Intelligent Buildings as Cyber-Physical Systems: a Reconfigurable Hardware Technology-based Approach
1-7.Views:252This paper discusses the idea to change the way to approach intelligent buildings (IBs) development and implementation by taking into account the last evolutions in cyber-physical systems (CPSs). Therefore, the main goal is to extend IBs design engineering with the constraints of systems in a CPS context. As well known, smart buildings are increasingly complex as they integrate many scientific areas and research topics, as well as a large scale of last-generation technologies. At the same time, the Internet has deeply transformed the way to manage information and services, respectively how information is transmitted and computed in cyberspace. The quick management and information processing inside cyber layer challenges the interaction with the physical world in a sense to develop IBs as smart distributed systems or CPSs. In addition to this, the papers emphasize the original idea of developing reconfigurable hardware technology-based (RHT-based) CPS architectures for IBs implementation purposes. The benefits of the RHT application in a CPS context for IBs are widely discussed and analyzed. The unfolded theoretical background has been supported by an implementation example using last generation software technologies. These experiments evidence the advantages and versatility of this challenging implementation paradigm of the latest digital technology, applied for current-state IBs development.
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Fault-tolerant Mechatronic Systems Development: a Biologically-inspired Approach
1-5.Views:115Modern mechatronics embeds sophisticated control systems to meet increased performance and safety requirements. Timely fault detection is a critical requirement especially in safety-critical mechatronic applications, where a minor fault can evolve to catastrophic situations. In such cases it looks a high demand for more reliable, safety and fault-tolerant mechatronic systems development. The alternative to overcome all these bottlenecks was inspired from the biological world. By adapting the remarkable surviving and self-healing abilities of living entities it is possible to develop novel hardware systems suitable to fulfill in all the most demanding high reliability operation criteria’s and requirements. The paper presents a biologicallyinspired computing system based on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) network developed for high reliability mechatronic applications. By choosing a design strategy relying on a multi-cellular concept which outlines the versatility of biologically inspired technologies, task allocation or reliability problems can be solved with high efficiency. Real-time simulations prove that by implementing methods that imitate biological processes, high performance fault-tolerant and selfhealing hardware architectures can be experimented and tested. The benefits of this approach are also confirmed by experiments performed on a laboratory-prototype hardware platform. The results underline that techniques which imitate bio-inspired strategies can offer viable solutions in high reliability mechatronic systems development.
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Industrial Robotics for ERP Controlled Smart Factories
1-9.Views:276At product manufacturing the time-to-market factor, the profitability and the delivered value define the success of an enterprise. The increasing number of modules in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) programs is a facing problem, when there is a margin between the manufacturing cells and the ERP. Nowadays, the connection between the industrial machines and the ERP is an important requirement especially at automated warehouses and smart factories. Other concerns at manufacturing are the maintenance schedules of the machines, and flexible and easy reconfiguration of the production lines or the production cells. Information technology provides solutions and software environments to implement complex production supervisor ERPs at smart factories. At a production line or an automated warehouse several technical parameters and information can influence the planning of the resources at the enterprise, like maintenance, machine error, stockpile, product ID, defective product ratios, etc. When there is machine maintenance, the company needs to order the service parts, as well as schedule the service time and the stop of the production line. In case of a machine error, the system can estimate the length of the service time from error messages, and reorganize orders, transportation, or even maintenance schedules of other machines. Our plug and play type robot and industrial automation controller project gives a solution for these hardware demanding needs.
