Development Of Control Software Research Articles

Development of an Earth-Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometer: Paving the Way for AI-Enhanced Low-Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Technology.

Today, it is difficult to have a high-field nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) device due to the high cost of its acquisition and maintenance. These high-end machines require significant space and specialist personnel for operation and offer exceptional quality in the acquisition, processing, and other advanced functions associated with detected signals. However, alternative devices are low-field nuclear magnetic resonance devices. They benefit from the elimination of high-tech components that generate static magnetic fields and advanced instruments. Instead, they used magnetic fields induced by ordinary conductors. Another category of spectrometers uses the Earth's magnetic field, which is simple and economical but limited in use. These devices are called Earth-Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (EFNMR) devices. This device is ideal for educational purposes, especially for engineers and those who study nuclear magnetic resonance, such as chemistry or other experimental sciences. Students can observe their internal workings and conduct experiments that complement their education without worrying about damaging equipment. This article provides a detailed explanation of the design and construction of electrical technology devices for the excitation of atomic spin resonance using Earth's magnetic fields. It covers all necessary stages, from research to analysis, including simulation, assembly, construction of each component, and the development of comprehensive software for spectrometer control.

Conversion of a Coaxial Rotorcraft to a UAV—Lessons Learned

A coaxial helicopter with a maximum take-off weight of 600 kg was converted to an unmanned aerial vehicle. A minimally invasive robotic actuator system was developed, which can be retrofitted onto the copilot seat of the rotorcraft in a short period of time to enable automatic flight. The automatic flight control robot includes electromechanical actuators, which are connected to the cockpit inceptors and control the helicopter. Most of the sensors and avionic components were integrated into the modular robotic system for faster integration into the rotorcraft. The mechanical design of the control system, the development of the robot control software, and the control system architecture are described in this paper. Furthermore, the multi-body simulation of the robotic system and the estimation of the linear low-order actuator models from hover-frame flight test data are discussed. The developed technologies in this study are not specific to a coaxial helicopter and can be applied to the conversion of any crewed flight vehicle with mechanical controls to unmanned or fly-by-wire. This agile development of a full-size flying test-bed can accelerate the testing of advanced flight control laws, as well as advanced air mobility-related functions.

Data-driven hierarchical learning approach for multi-point servo control of Pan–Tilt–Zoom cameras

Pan–Tilt–Zoom (PTZ) cameras, with their significant features of free rotation and zoom, are widely used in areas such as border security, ecological conservation, emergency management, and the military. PTZ cameras can achieve automatic monitoring of a selected area through multiple servo operations, known as multi-point servo control. However, due to the deficiencies in the servo control Software Development Kit (SDK), hardware wear, and interference from complex external environments, the multi-point servo control process generates significant errors. This paper proposes a precise multi-point servo control framework based on Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) to address this issue. The complexity of real-world environments necessitates a reward function design that fully considers various factors, for which we propose the directional gravity reward function. Due to the instability during the training process, prolonged trial-and-error interactions between the agent and the equipment can cause irreversible damage to the devices. This framework employs a phased training approach, where the agent learns sequentially from offline, off-policy, and on-policy data, reducing direct interaction with the equipment while enhancing the agent’s overall performance. Additionally, real-time and accurate device status can be obtained by performing feature matching on images from adjacent time frames, which is crucial for the system’s operation. Evaluation results indicate that our proposed precise multi-point servo control framework significantly outperforms other methods in 4-point servo control tasks in both virtual and real-world scenarios. Additionally, the operational process fully considers safety issues.

Carving out Control Code: Automated Identification of Control Software in Autopilot Systems

Cyber-physical systems interact with the world through software controlling physical effectors. Carefully designed controllers, implemented as safety-critical control software, also interact with other parts of the software suite, and may be difficult to separate, verify, or maintain. Moreover, some software changes, not intended to impact control system performance, do change controller response through a variety of means including interaction with external libraries or unmodeled changes only existing in the cyber system (e.g., exception handling). As a result, identifying safety-critical control software, its boundaries with other embedded software in the system, and the way in which control software evolves could help developers isolate, test, and verify control implementation, and improve control software development. In this work we present an automated technique, based on a novel application of machine learning, to detect commits related to control software, its changes, and how the control software evolves. We leverage messages from developers (e.g., commit comments), and code changes themselves to understand how control software is refined, extended, and adapted over time. We examine three distinct, popular, real-world, safety-critical autopilots – ArduPilot, Paparazzi UAV, and LibrePilot to test our method demonstrating an effective detection rate of 0.95 for control-related code changes.

Making apps, owning data: Digital sovereignty and public authorities’ arrangements to “byte” back

This study tells the story of two public transport authorities (PTA) in Sweden who developed their own apps. Although this might seem trivial and far-detached from the critical issues discussed in organization studies, this story raises questions of great relevance for this field, namely how digital sovereignty is organized. Digital sovereignty refers to governments trying to take or regain power and control over “the digital,” which a small group of large tech companies have monopolized. Drawing on a 3 year qualitative study of app making, and using assemblage theory, this study shows that digital sovereignty is not only about controlling software development or data ownership, but also about re-configuring the organization in relation to digital artifacts such as apps. By bypassing procurement procedures and paralleling their IT-departments, the PTAs here display how digital sovereignty comes from “below,” originating from frustrated civil servants within the public authorities who literally tried to “byte back” in a digital world run by large tech companies.

Requirement patterns in deductive verification of poST Programs

Process-oriented programming is one of the approaches to developing control software. A process-oriented program is defined as a sequence of processes. Each process is represented by a set of named states containing program code that define the logic of the process's behavior. Program execution is sequential execution of each of these processes in their current states at every iteration of the control cycle. Processes can interact through changing each other's states and shared variables. The paper expands a method for classifying temporal requirements for process-oriented programs in order to simplify and automate the deductive verification of such programs. The method consists of the following steps. At the first step, the requirements are formalized in a specialized language DV-TRL, a variant of typed first-order predicate logic with a set of interpreted types and predicate and functional symbols, that reflect specific concepts of control systems in a process-oriented paradigm. At the second step, the formalized requirements are divided into classes, each of which is defined by a pattern — a parametric formula of the DV-TRL language. The correctness conditions generated for process-oriented programs regarding requirements satisfying the same pattern have the same proof scheme. At the third step, appropriate proof schemes are developed. In our paper, we first give a brief introduction to the poST language, a process-oriented extension to the ST language of the IEC 61131-3 standard. Next, the DV-TRL language is defined. We also provide a collection of natural language requirements for several control systems. Then we define patterns that fully cover all the requirements of this collection. For each of these patterns we give an example of a formalized requirement from the collection and describe a scheme for proving the correctness conditions for this pattern. Statistics on the distribution of requirements from the collection across patterns reveals the most popular patterns. We also analyzed related works.

Development of software for contactless control of UAVs

The article is devoted to the development of a program for contactless control of a UAV using a neural network that tracks the position of an object. For these purposes, a corresponding model was trained on the ultralytics YOLOv8 neural network. The graphs of the training of this model are presented, demonstrating the change in the magnitude of the loss function over the bounding box and class, as well as the values of the mAP50-95 metric. The training was completed when the value of the mAP50-95 metric was 0.855. Software has been developed to control the UAV using hand movements, its block diagram and description are given. The program reads the coordinates of the hand in each frame, calculates its area, evaluates the received data and sends control commands to the copter, which moves in the appropriate direction for a given step, including a certain group of LEDs. At the same time, the screen displays a simulation of the drone›s movement in two projections (front and top) and displays the relative coordinates of the drone. The software was tested on a Geoscan pioneer mini quadcopter. It can be used for educational, demonstration purposes, in agriculture, UAV sports competitions, aerial photography and video filming and other fields of activity.

Application of Big-Data Analysis and QFD Based Quality Management Model on Powertrain Electronic Control Software Development

Application of Big-Data Analysis and QFD Based Quality Management Model on Powertrain Electronic Control Software Development

Knowledge-aided Integrated Development Environment (K-IDE) for Control Software Development

Knowledge-aided Integrated Development Environment (K-IDE) for Control Software Development

Analysis of Battery Testing Protocols in the Transition from the Lab to the Field: A Test Case Using Advanced Zn-MnO2 Batteries in Off-Grid Solar Microgrids

Understanding cycling performance of batteries under varying conditions is crucial for continued development of emerging chemistries. Currently much of this work is focused on cycling single cells in well-controlled lab experiments. There are few module cycling studies in the open literature. Studies of full-sized fielded systems are even rarer. As a result of this data gap, there is limited understanding of how single cell cycling can be used to predict performance of fielded systems prior to their deployment.Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) recently deployed an advanced Zn-MnO2 secondary battery energy storage system in an off-grid solar plus storage system. Using this deployment as a test case, we will detail how performance and degradation for batteries can vary between the lab and the field. We will also discuss ways that single cell and module lab cycling can be improved to better predict operation in fielded systems.In preparation for this deployment, SNL conducted single cell cycling experiments in the lab to simulate operation in the field and determine the expected life of the systems. The first test program utilized elements of the IEC 61427-1 standard for photovoltaic off-grid application to simulate the temperature and predicted state of charge (SOC) range the cells will be cycled during field operation. The simulated field cycling targeted SOC ranges of 10 to 40% and 80-100% over 150 cycles with temperature varied between -4 and 35oC to match the ambient conditions in the field during each season. The second type of cycling test was a temperature dependence study to determine how temperature impacted cell degradation. Cells were cycled at C/10 at their full SOC range and at a single temperature until they reached 40% capacity retention. Both cycling studies predicted that low temperature operation would increase the rate of degradation.The system was deployed in May of 2022, and since that time the SNL team has collected a significant amount of performance data to help analyze system level behaviors as compared to observations from cell level testing. These include battery interactions with the solar charge controller, limitations on power inverter settings, and variance between the average system level state of charge and the test protocol. Additionally, the team is analyzing conditions found in the field, with regards to ambient temperature, solar insolation and battery charging rates, and customer usage patterns for comparison with cell-level testing protocol.Observations of the deployed system’s performance indicate there is a need for more nuanced testing protocols for lab testing that can better approximate field conditions. These may include dynamic temperature ranges that vary throughout a charge/discharge cycle, and solar charging assumptions that account for reduced insolation due to cloud cover. This can help further inform the development of charge control algorithms, system hardware and software that can help improve the overall performance of solar microgrid energy storage systems.Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-mission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525. SAND2023-02502A

Time Series Forecasting during Software Project State Analysis

Repositories of source code and their hosting platforms are important data sources for software project development and management processes. These sources allow for the extraction of historical data points for the product development process evaluation. Extracted data points reflect the previous development experience and allow future planning and active development tracking. The aim of this research is to create a predictive approach to control software development based on a time series extracted from repositories and hosting platforms. This article describes the method of extracting parameters from repositories, the approach to creating time series models and forecasting their behavior. Also, the article represents the proposed approach for software project analyses based on fuzzy logic principles. The novelty of this approach is the ability to perform an expert evaluation of different stages of software product development based on the forecasted values of interested parameters and a fuzzy rule base.

Model-based development of software for network control of automotive vehicles’ equipment

BACKGROUND: Various devices and systems connected via onboard network with electronic control unit are the part of automotive vehicles’ equipment. Such devices and systems, which ensure the operability of a vehicle or are the elements of technological units, having microprocessor control, are based on various physical principles. Designers of such devices and systems may not have sufficient knowledge and experience to develop the software independently, which applies to the development of software for the network control.
 AIM: The development of software for information subsystem of a technical device that interacts with an electronic control unit via onboard network as part of automotive vehicles’ equipment, as well as the demonstration of application of model-based programming tools in this development.
 METHODS: A comprehensive description of technical solutions developed to achieve the listed aims using methods of system analysis and methods for developing and debugging of software is given. According to these methods, model-based programming tools are used as handlers for built-in interface modules of microcontroller and elements of software layout. Software elements for processing received messages, performing actions with the data received in them, as well as generation of response messages have been developed in the C language.
 RESULTS: Software that processes messages received by a device subordinated to an electronic control unit via the CAN network, generates response messages addressed to this unit, and sends them has been developed. The method of access to the receiving buffer of the network interface and priority of software execution are taken into account.
 CONCLUSION: It is shown that model-based programming in combination with programming tools based on structured text is an effective software development technology that is convenient for designers of technical devices and systems based on various physical principles and requiring microprocessor control. In particular, the abovementioned should be attributed to specialists in the field of electrical engineering who develop equipment for automotive vehicles.

Simulation and Implementation of Signal Processing for LFM Radar Using DSK 6713

This research aims to propose a comprehensive simulation and implementation methodology for LFM (Linear Frequency Modulated) Radar Signal Processing and its application, using digital signal processing techniques on the DSP Starter Kit (DSK) 6713 board. The motivation behind this study is to develop control software based on MATLAB R14 and SIMULINK to model various system software tasks, including detection, A/D conversion, Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), modulation, accumulation, decision-making, and target detection. The simulations are categorized into two groups: ideal beat frequency and parameterized beat frequency. We introduce several important terminologies for consideration, including pulse compression, SNR, matched filter, Doppler effect, and more. The use of real-time data exchange (RTDX) will facilitate the generation of input data and enable real-time calculations for outputs, leading to the creation of machine code for the DSP chip. This process aims to ensure data verification calculations and enhance the credibility and performance of the proposed methodology. By conducting thorough simulations, verification, and practical testing, the study demonstrates the satisfactory credibility and performance of the developed method. Using this research, we aim to contribute to the advancement of LFM Radar Signal Processing and enable its efficient implementation using digital signal processing techniques on the DSP Starter Kit (DSK) 6713 board.

Taming complexity of industrial printing systems using a constraint‐based DSL: An industrial experience report

AbstractFlexible printing systems are highly complex systems that consist of printers, that print individual sheets of paper, and finishing equipment, that processes sheets after printing, for example, assembling a book. Integrating finishing equipment with printers involves the development of control software that configures the devices, taking hardware constraints into account. This control software is highly complex to realize due to (1) the intertwined nature of printing and finishing, (2) the large variety of print products and production options for a given product, and (3) the large range of finishers produced by different vendors. We have developed a domain‐specific language called CSX that offers an interface to constraint solving specific to the printing domain. We use it to model printing and finishing devices and to automatically derive constraint solver‐based environments for automatic configuration. We evaluate CSX on its coverage of the printing domain in an industrial context, and we report on lessons learned on using a constraint‐based DSL in an industrial context.

Software Integration of an IMU Sensor to a CubeSat Platform Based on CSP (CubeSat Space Protocol)

The development and use of nanosatellites have increased in recent years. Space programs were exclusive to governments with significant capital. Now, nanosatellites have changed the orbital ecosystem and have allowed new regions and a wide range of industries to position themselves in the so-called new space, a growing sector that democratizes the commercialization of space thanks to a smaller, more agile, and affordable technology. Nanosatellites have similar capabilities to their conventional counterparts but are commonly used for highly specific missions such as Earth observation, telecommunications, and meteorology. The complex development of a nanosatellite requires solving different engineering problems to assembly and integrate all hardware and software components into a small space. It requires the monitoring, control, and operation of the satellite’s features from the ground segment. One major challenge is the development of satellite mission control software for both space and ground segments in limited-time scheduled missions. This article describes the integration process of an EPSON M-G364PDCA Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) to a CubeSat platform nanosatellite based on the Danish company GomSpace devices and a CSP protocol. The result is a hardware implementation and software development by the Colombian Air Force (FAC) team as part of the FACSAT-2 program. The integration of these components into the space and ground segment contributes to solve one challenge in the development of control software for space missions, as described above, and becomes the first approach for Colombian space nanosatellites software development. In addition, this research presents the Colombian Air Force configuration for space mission subsystems on the CSP network, the software development for the main on-board computer based on a NanoMind A3200 to setup the IMU —controlled and monitored from the ground segment through a CSP terminal on a Linux server—, and setup telemetry data from space to be sent periodically to the ground segment and stored locally in a MongoDB database for its subsequent visualization and analysis.

Development of control software for self-organizing intelligent mobile robots

Maintaining a specific geometric formation during the movement is crucial for multiagent systems of mobile robots in various applications. Proper coordination can lead to reduced system costs, increased reliability and efficiency, and system adaptability and flexibility. This research proposes a novel movement coordination method for self-governing multiagent systems of intelligent mobile robots. The proposed method uses a leader-follower technique with a virtual leader to maintain a specific geometric structure. Additionally, the epsilon greedy algorithm is utilized to avoid loops. To reduce power consumption, it is proposed to turn on only a few robots' lidars at a time. They could drive all the robots in the group, allowing them to reach the goal without colliding with obstacles. Experiments on a complex map with nine robots were conducted to test the method's effectiveness. The success rate of the swarm reaching the target position and the number of steps needed were evaluated. Testing varied angular velocities of 1 to 20 degrees and linear velocities of 0.1 to 5.5 m/s. Results show the method effectively guides the robots without collisions. This method enables a group of self-governing multiagent systems of intelligent mobile robots to maintain a desired formation while avoiding obstacles and reducing power consumption. The results of the experimental study demonstrate the method's potential to be implemented in real-world missions and traffic management systems to increase efficiency and reduce costs. The proposed method can be utilized in military missions and traffic management systems, where maintaining a specific geometric formation is crucial. The method's ability to avoid obstacles and reduce power consumption can also lead to reduced costs and increased efficiency.

Development of Microcomputers and Motor Control Software for Steel Pipe Cutting Units

In the paper there is projected the system for automatic regulation of the flying cut-off device for the moving pipe.For the main drive there is introduced the direct-current motor,reductor, gear and gear-lathe which is rigidly connected with cut-off device. The speed is regulated by the three-phase thyristor regulator wich supples the DC motor.For the process automation there is projected a microcomputer. On the base of the projected hardware microcomputer there is made a software support. The task for the newly projected system is better accuracy of the cutting and increasing of the automation level.

MDD: A Unified Model-Driven Design Framework for Embedded Control Software

Model-driven methods are widely used in embedded control software development. Current design tools, such as Ptolemy-II and Simulink, have strong modeling capability but their simulation and code generation functionalities are challenged by the increasing complexity of control requirements. For simulation, emulating the triggering of the actor leads to additional time overhead and speed degradation. For code generation, generating redundant content degrades the code quality. Besides, current tools do not have a unified interface, which makes it difficult to cooperation. In this article, we propose a unified model-driven design framework MDD to facilitate embedded control software development. MDD can support the unification of models built by different modeling tools for high-efficiency simulation and high-quality code generation. The MDD framework supports the expansion of more modeling tools, and also supports the expansion of more uses, such as unified testing and verification. First, it offers a model intermediate representation (MIR) and several corresponding parsers, which facilitate a unified representation and cooperation for different design tools. Then, based on data flow schedule analysis of the original MIR, intermediate code representation will be generated for optimized code synthesis. Finally, a variety of code translators will synthesize the intermediate code representation into the code of actual use, such as code for simulation and code for deployment. For evaluation, we enhance two widely used design tools in industry, Ptolemy-II and Simulink, and apply them on the implementation of several benchmark models and a real-world self-driving control software of our industrial collaborator. Using MDD can help reduce their simulation time by 98.9% and 92.6%, the generated code by 99.7% and 69.9% in the number of lines, and 94.3% and 34.3% in code execution time, respectively.

DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATION OF THE DIGITAL TWIN OF THE HYDRAULIC CONTROL VALVE

The paper is focused on the development of the digital twin of the hydraulic control valve for continuous control of the oil flow – servovalve or control valve – and their use by the testing of the control system of the test rig for the measurement and evaluation of the characteristics of the valve. The structure of the mathematical model of the control valve enables to do the parameterisation for different types and sizes of the control valves only using the catalogue data delivered by the valve producers. In the next step the created and parameterized model is implemented into the dSpace MicroLabBox for the real time realisation of the digital twin. The MicroLabBox is equipped with the analogue inputs and outputs and allows the connection of the digital twin to the control system in the same way as the real servovalve. Finally, the characteristics of the valve are measured and evaluated using the HiL simulation of the digital twin. The digital twin of the servovalve allows the testing of the developed control system and software for the hydraulic test rig for the measurement of the valve characteristics without the need of the real valves different types.

NEW DEVICE FOR RAPID MEASUREMENT OF MACHINE TOOL GEOMETRIC ERRORS

Control systems of modern machine tools are equipped with a number of functions for volumetric accuracy enhancement. These functions can compensate for all the geometric errors of the axes, which are characterized by 21 errors for a 3-axis machine tool. Compensation data are stored in compensation tables and the control system calculates actual compensation based on these tables and actual machine tool position. Geometric errors are measured within the machine tool maintenance plan and it presents a time-consuming process. Measurement is mainly based on interferometric devices, where the precise setup of laser source and detector is challenging. This article introduces an original system for automatic interferometer set up to speed up the measurement of geometric errors. The system is designed for the interferometer Renishaw XM-60, which simultaneously measures all 6 degrees of freedom. The developed control software identifies interferometer position and transforms the measured data into a machine coordinate system. Numerical simulation verified the proposed solution.