PC-based Control System Research Articles

ROBOTIC TECHNOLOGICAL CELLULTRASONIC FLAW DETECTION

Ultrasonic flaw detection is the most versatile non-destructive testing method for detecting defects in various materials. The aim of this work is to develop a robotic technological cell for ultrasonic flaw detection of welded products. To achieve this goal, we selected the necessary equipment, developed an algorithm for the control system, and wrote control and data collection programs. In addition to identifying the product defect, the PC-based control system also ensures safety during the diagnostic process.
 The technical support of the cell consists of an ultrasonic flaw detector "EPOCH 650" with a rectangular pulse generator and a digital receiver, an industrial robot Mitsubishi Electric MELFA RV-FR series, a work table for the required part orientation, inductive sensors for identifying the installation of the part, light barriers to ensure safe operation of the cell and a control system.
 The cell control system is implemented in the form of a chalkboard and includes a central processing device for cell control, a robot control processor for implementing the robot's trajectory and communication with the robot controller, a module for communication with peripheral equipment, and a data logging module for registration, recording and sharing of events in the control system, a digital input module for receiving digital signals of 0 or 24 V DC from contact type sensors, manual control buttons, status signals from alarm systems, positioning drives, etc.
 The cell software ensures the implementation of control algorithms and consists of a control program to control the robot's movements, an executive program to ensure the control system's analysis of signals from the flaw detector, a security system, and user interaction via the system interface, The interface system receives data from the PLC and is responsible for graphically displaying information about the control system.
 The paper presents the results of experimental research and simulation, which confirm the efficiency and effectiveness of the developed algorithms and control programs. By determining the optimal values of the speeds of movement and rotation of the robot links during their simultaneous movement, the speed and productivity of the cell are increased.

Implementing a Precision Pneumatic Plug Tray Seeder with High Seeding Rates for Brassicaceae Seeds via Real-Time Trajectory Tracking Control

In recent years, the aging of the rural population worldwide has become a major concern, necessitating the development of agricultural automation. Pneumatic energy has emerged as a reliable and environmentally friendly option, aiding in the global effort to reduce carbon emissions. The purpose of this study is to reduce the amount of labor required for plug tray seeding by developing an automated seeder that employs a precision pneumatic servo system via the rod-less actuator with real-time trajectory tracking capabilities. The proposed seeder has a simple structure, is easy to maintain, and saves energy. It mainly consists of a rod-less pneumatic cylinder, a needle seeding mechanism, a soil drilling mechanism and a PC-based real-time controller. Mathematical models of the developed precision pneumatic plug tray seeder are analyzed and established, and an adaptive sliding mode controller is proposed. A PC-based real-time control system is developed using MATLAB/SIMULINK via an optical encoder with a sampling frequency of 1 kHz to enable the development of precise pneumatic plug tray seeder. An optical encoder is used to measure the displacement of the rod-less cylinder which represents real-time positions of the plug tray loading platform. Experiments are conducted using Brassicaceae seeds, and the rates of single seeding, multiple seeding, missed seeding and germination are carried out through manual measurement. The results indicate that the seeder exhibits satisfactory performance, with a root mean square error of less than 0.5 mm and a single-seeding rate of more than 97%. Overall, our findings provide new insights for nurseries and could contribute to the reduction in agricultural carbon emissions.

Control of Back-pressure During Wind Tunnel Testing of A Two Dimensional Ramjet Air-intake Model

For optimum utilization of available run-time in blowdown wind tunnels, the controls, instrumentation, data acquisition and various other related systems associated with measurements must be efficiently synchronized. Testing of the air-intake model is a typical example where large number of steady and unsteady pressure measurements need to be combined with control of back pressure at the exit plane of the intake. This paper presents the development of a PC-based control system for testing a ramjet air-intake model at supersonic Mach numbers in the 0.3m trisonic wind tunnel at CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore. The back pressure of the two-dimensional ramjet air intake model was controlled using a rectangular butterfly valve driven by a stepper motor external to the test section. Commands to vary the valve position were programmed in a PC and the valve position acquired from a potentiometer. The motor control and pressure data acquisition were operated in a hand-shake mode to enable hands-off execution of tests and maximize the data throughput from each blowdown.

Feedback Linearization Based Robust Control for Linear Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors

In this study, we designed a feedback linearization control strategy for linear permanent magnet synchronous motors (LPMSMs) as well as a robust control mechanism. First, the highly nonlinear system was transformed into an exact linear system by the feedback linearization technique. Then, we designed a robust controller to mitigate the impact of system parameter disturbances on system performance. This novel robust feedback controller can be applied to electromagnetic force, speed and position control loops in linear motors, correct the errors created by uncertainty factors in the entire system in real time, and set the system’s settling time based on the application environment of the plant. Finally, we performed simulations and experiments using a PC-based motor control system, which demonstrated that the proposed robust feedback controller can achieve good performance in the controlled system with robust anti-disturbance control.

PERSONAL COMPUTER-BASED CONTROL AND MONITORIBG SYSTEM FOR BIODIESEL ALGAE PHOTOBIOREACTOR

Growing of Algae for biodiesel production has gained popularity in recent times. This is becausebiodiesel from algae has an economic advantage over other oil crops. The oil content that can beextracted from microalgae biomass depends on the culture conditions and microalgae species. Thismeans that besides selecting the best microalgae species, it is also necessary to ensure and maintain thebest culture conditions for optimal biodiesel production. Optimum algae growth conditions can be bestbe provided by a Controlled Environment Bioproduction System (CEBS) for the algae called as photo-bioreactor (PBR). This paper reports design and fabrication of a PC based control system for a PBRproduction system for algae being developed at the School of Biosystems and EnvironmentalEngineering (SoBEE) in Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) in Kenya.The control system is intended to ensure that optimum PH, temperature, nutrients content; lightintensity/duration and salinity of growth medium for algae are maintained. The paper covers the designand fabrication of the PC control and monitoring system. The control and monitoring system consists ofa computer program and a microcontroller connected to sensors and actuators. The computer program(master) provides the graphical user interface (GUI) consisting of control buttons and means for realtime data logging and analysis as well as real-time simulation of PBR activities. It is available inexecutable file that can be run in any windows OS computer. The microcontroller program (slave)provides the means for connecting sensors and is used to measure as well as monitor the conditions inthe PBR tanks. Communication between the computer program and the microcontroller is achievedthrough the universal serial bus (USB). The control system consists of both open and closed loopsystems. The open loop system is used to control the light duration at predetermined intervals of time.The closed loop system is used to control the nutrient concentration, light intensity, PH and oxygen:carbon dioxide ratio.

Perancangan dan Realisasi Alat Demonstrasi PC-based Control untuk Simulasi Keamanan Bangunan menggunakan Embedded PC

D emonstration mode is a method used to show a process or work of an object. Demonstration methods can be used to illustrate information to others, predict what will happen, facilitate different types of explanations, and some unfamiliar issues can be asked immediately when a process is demonstrated to be clearly answered. Companies in particular that sell electrical appliances use demo tools to explain the various control systems offered, or how to use the tools they sell. Demo tools are needed to explain the benefits of the control system and the use of the tools. Through automated gate control systems, automatic lights, and alarm functions, the simulation of building security systems becomes the case for the community. The development of industrial technology in the present can not be separated from the role of industrial automation. Industrial automation or numerical control is the use of control systems as well as computers used to control industrial machines and process controls to replace human power carriers. PC based control system is a high-ability control platform. The demonstration tool simulates a security system in the form of a digital output for LED lights whose sequence depends on the given digital input (push button and switch) and smart house applications. Analog input is also implemented, but for analog outputs the voltmeter does not generate the correct voltage value when the potentiometer value changes. This is because there is a loading on the voltmeter so that the output that appears on the voltmeter becomes much smaller than it should be.

Elastyczny układ sterowania CNC maszyn bazujący na PC

In the article a PC-based CNC machine control system is presented which communicates with servo drives and auxiliary input/output devices via EtherCAT bus. LinuxRTAI real-time operating system and LinuxCNC control software were implemented in the PC controller. A software module implementing EtherCAT communication with the servo drives was developed and integrated with LinuxCNC. Experimental results were presented which show the trajectory smoothing capabilities of the control system. Experimental results were also presented that show following errors obtained by running an example trajectory on a linear motion module. Basic parameters that show the control systems capabilities obtained during the experimental tests have been presented. The CNC control system presented in this article was implemented on a 3-axis machine.

RADON EXHALATION FROM SOIL AND ITS DEPENDENCE FROM ENVIRONMENTAL PARAMETERS.

An automatic measuring apparatus called exhalometer for measurement of the radon exhalation rate from soil is introduced. It consists of a pneumatic driven accumulation chamber with an open bottom, a PC-based control system, six Lucas cells for radon measurement and sensors for environmental parameters. It allows moving the accumulation chamber and hereby opening or closing it. The exhalation rate is determined through the increase of radon in the accumulation chamber. For studying exhalation and the affecting factors, the exhalometer was placed at an undisturbed meadow for the entire year of 2015. The daily radon exhalation rate ranges from 2.5 to 50.7 Bq m-2 h-1 with an average of 25.3 Bq m-2 h-1. The exhalation rate shows daily and seasonal variations with its maximum in the afternoon and in spring. The dependence on several environmental parameters is discussed. The stable performance indicates the system's fitness for long-term measurements.

A Light-Weight Rapid Control Prototyping System Based on Open Source Hardware

In this paper, we propose a light-weight rapid control prototyping (RCP) system based on off-the-shelf open source hardware to achieve high performance computing, cost effectiveness, portability, and easy accessiblity. The proposed RCP system consists of a PC-based computer-aided control system design (CACSD) tool for computing control action and tiny palm-sized open source hardware for input and output (I/O) operation and data transfer through a built-in high-speed USB interface. The popular-priced and portable open source hardware is used as a bridge between CACSD tools and real plants to deliver the control and sensor data at the sampling time points. Ten I/O function blocks written in C code are developed based on the CACSD tool employed for the proposed light-weight RCP system in order to handle I/O operation in a simple way. In addition, we suggest two practical strategies, a batch transfer strategy and a variable sampling period method, to increase the sampling rate of the control system. It is shown through experiment that the proposed light-weight RCP system works well up to a sampling rate of 2 kHz without adopting expensive hardware and C code generators. It is expected that the proposed RCP system will be considered as affordable and readily available to schools for mass education.

Precision Force Control for an Electro-Hydraulic Press Machine

This thesis is primarily intended to design a PC-based control system to control the force of an electro-hydraulic servo press system for implementing precision force control. The main feature is to develop a composite control by using the relief valve and the flow servo valve. Using feedback from a force sensor, a fuzzy controller was designed with LabVIEW software as the system control core for achieving a precision force control for the hydraulic cylinder on its travel and output. The weakness of hydraulic systems is that hydraulic oil is compressible and prone to leaking, and its characteristics can vary with oil temperature, thus making it difficult for a general linear controller to achieve accurate control. Therefore, a fuzzy controller was designed with LabVIEW along with a NI-PCI_6221 interface card and a load cell to control the servo valve flow and the relief valve to control the pressure source. The testing results indicate that accurate force control output of an electro-hydraulic servo press system can be obtained.

Force/position control of a robot manipulator for human-robot interaction

With regard to both human and robot capabilities, human-robot interaction provides several benefits, and this will be significantly developed and implemented. This work focuses on the development of real-time external force/position control used for human-robot interaction. The force-controlled robotic system integrated with proportional integral control was performed and evaluated to ensure its reliably and timely operational characteristics, in which appropriate proportional integral gains were experimentally adopted using a set of virtual crank-turning tests. The designed robotic system is made up of a robot manipulator arm, an ATI Gamma multi-axis force/torque sensor and a real-time external PC based control system. A proportional integral controller has been developed to provide stable and robust force control on unknown environmental stiffness and motion. To quantify its effectiveness, the robotic system has been verified through a comprehensive set of experiments, in which force measurement and ALTER real-time path control systems were evaluated. In summary, the results indicated satisfactorily stable performance of the robot force/position control system. The gain tuning for proportional plus integral control algorithm was successfully implemented. It can be reported that the best performance as specified by the error root mean square method of the radial force is observed with proportional and integral gains of 0.10 and 0.005 respectively.

LABVIEW BASED CONVEYOR CONTROL SYSTEM

A conveyor control system project was implemented using software LabVIEW and interfacing electronics such that it mimics the operation of a conveyor used in a bottling plant with beginning, filling and ending stations. Conveyors are used for automated transportation of materials. For this project, the conveyor simulator is equipped with a dc motor mounted directly to an axle for driving the conveyor belt, a freely rotating axle for the opposite side of the conveyor belt. Three IR proximity sensors, positioned at the middle and both the ends, are used to detect the position of bottle on the conveyor. A load sensor is employed at the middle to measure the volume of fluid in the bottle. Suitable displays were incorporated in the software. A PC based control system enables fast communication between controls programming and equipment.

DEVELOPMENT OF TRACKING SYSTEM FOR MOBILE ROBOT USING IMAGE RECOGNITION ALGORITHMS

In this paper, an intelligent mobile robot using image processing technology is developed. The mobile robot contains an image system, a loading platform, a balance control system, a PC-based controller, four ultrasonic sensors and a power system. We develop a PC-based control system for image processing and path planning. The mobile robot can track a moving target and adjust the loading platform by the balance control system simultaneously. The image processing based on OpenCV uses two different tracking methods to track moving targets: MTLT (Match Template Learning Tracking) and TLD (Tracking, Learning and Detection). The efficiency of both methods for tracking the moving target on the mobile robot is compared here. The balance control system, with a HOLTEK Semiconductor Company’s HT66F Series 8-bit microprocessor as the processor, uses the PID control law according to the feedback signals of the inclinometer sensor to control the balance level of the loading platform.

PLC- and PC-based Local Control System for the HWR#2 Cryomodule of the Heavy Ion Accelerator RAON

PLC- and PC-based Local Control System for the HWR#2 Cryomodule of the Heavy Ion Accelerator RAON

Development of a Tracking System on the Mobile Robot

The purpose of this paper is to develop an intelligent mobile robot using image processing technology. The mobile robot is composed of a visual tracking system, a loading platform, a balance control system, a PC-based controller, four ultrasonic sensors and a power system. We develop a PC based control system for image processing and path planning. The mobile robot can track a moving target and adjust the loading platform by the balance control system simultaneously. The Image processing based on OpenCV use two different tracking methods, MTLT (Match Template Learning Tracking) and TLD (Tracking, Learning and Detection), to track moving targets. The efficiencies of both methods for tracking the moving target on the mobile robot are compared in this paper. The loading platform control system uses HOLTEK Semiconductor Company's HT66F Series 8-bit microprocessor as the processor, and receives the feedback data from the FAS-A inclinometer sensor. The controller of the loading platform uses the PID control law according to the feedback signals of the inclinometer sensor, and controls the rotation speed of the platform motor to tune the balance level. Keywords— Intelligent mobile robot, Image processing, OpenCV, MTLT, TLD, HOLTEK, FAS-A inclinometer sensor, PID control.

Precision Force Control for an Electro-Hydraulic Press Machine

This thesis is primarily intended to design a PC-based control system to control the force of an electro-hydraulic servo press system for implementing precision force control. The main feature is to develop a composite control by using the relief valve and the flow servo valve. Using feedback from a force sensor, a fuzzy controller was designed with LabVIEW software as the system control core for achieving a precision force control for the hydraulic cylinder on its travel and output. The weakness of hydraulic systems is that hydraulic oil is compressible and prone to leaking, and its characteristics can vary with oil temperature, thus making it difficult for a general linear controller to achieve accurate control. Therefore, a fuzzy controller was designed with LabVIEW along with a NI-PCI_6221 interface card and a load cell to control the servo valve flow and the relief valve to control the pressure source. The testing results indicate that accurate force control output of an electro-hydraulic servo press system can be obtained.

Online monitoring and self-tuning control using pole placement method for active vibration control of a flexible beam

This paper presents the experimental results of online self-tuning pole placement control for active vibration of a flexible beam. The vibration is controlled using a piezoelectric actuator bonded on a flexible beam. An online computer control that runs on a PC-based control and its graphical user interface have been developed in such a way that the user can perform online monitoring and manipulation of control parameters of the active vibration control algorithm for a flexible beam system. The parameters of the pole placement controller have been self-tuned based on autoregression with an exogenous terms model of a bonded piezoelectric actuator beam identified via a recursive least square algorithm. A PC-based control system was implemented using a peripheral component interconnect data acquisition card and LABVIEW software. Results show that the online self-tuning pole placement control offers better transient performance over the fixed controller when tested at different tip loads. The control parameters have converged to a new value as the physical parameter of a flexible beam is changed.

Pointing of HAGAR telescope mirrors

An array of seven atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes was commissioned at a high altitude site in Hanle in the Ladakh region of the Himalayas. The array called HAGAR has been designed to observe celestial γ-rays of energy >100 GeV. Each telescope is altitude-azimuth mounted and carries seven parabolic mirrors whose optic axes are co-aligned with the telescope axis. The telescopes point and track a celestial source using a PC-based drive control system. Two important issues in positioning of each HAGAR telescope are pointing accuracy of telescope axis and co-alignment of mirrors’ optic axes with the telescope axis. We have adopted a three pronged strategy to address these issues, namely use of pointing models to improve pointing accuracy of the telescopes, RA-DEC scan technique to measure the pointing offsets of the mirrors and mechanical fine-tuning of off-axis mirrors by sighting a distant stationary light source. This paper discusses our efforts in this regard as well as the current status of pointing and monitoring of HAGAR telescopes.

Intelligent Pitch Control for a 2MW Wind Turbine

The objective of the paper is to develop a novel intelligent pitch control system of a 2MW wind turbine driven by variable-speed hydraulic pump-controlled system. For realizing the intelligent pitch controller, self-organizing fuzzy sliding mode control, which combines fuzzy sliding mode control and self-organizing modifier, is proposed. In order to verify the proposed concept experimentally, a full-scale test rig of the hydraulic pitch control system of a 2MW wind turbine blades, including a novel mechanism of pitch control, a variable-speed hydraulic pump-controlled system, a disturbance system and a PC-Based control system, are designed and set up. The variable-speed pump-controlled hydraulic servo system contains an AC servo motor and a constant displacement hydraulic piston pump. In order to compare the control performance, the pitch control experiments by fuzzy sliding mode control and by self-organizing fuzzy sliding mode control are implemented respectively for different path profiles and different disturbance torque. Finally, the experimental results clarify that the pitch control controlled by self-organizing fuzzy sliding mode control can perform better than that controlled by fuzzy sliding mode control.

A Multi-Platform Compatible and Open Software Architecture for Computer Numerical Control Systems

Abstract. By analyzing the current open software architectures for PC-based master-slave Computer Numerical Control(CNC) systems and soft-CNC systems, this paper put forward a multi-platform compatible open software architecture for the two types of CNC systems. The architecture is composed by five different function layers: CNC presentation Layer, CNC Business Layer, CNC Data Layer, NC Interface Layer and NCK Layer. Firstly, the WPF and the MVVM pattern decouple the User Interface (UI) presentation and business logic. Secondly, the component technology is used to decouple the business logic and Numerical Control(NC) functions. Thirdly, the implementation of NC tasks is put into non-RT environment and RT environment. The experiment results of developing the application based on the architecture show that the layered software architecture improves the maintenance and development efficiency, and running the application in the “non-RT+RT” environment proves that the architecture is available for PC-based master-slave CNC systems and soft-CNC systems.