Laboratório remoto de automação para aprendizagem de conceitos de redes de Petri

Abstract

In education in industrial automation, engineering courses, in addtion to theoretical foundations, it requires practical learning implementation of Petri nets, hardware and software for programmable logic controllers. To develop the knowledge and skills intensive use of laboratories, which are not always available in universities. In this context, remote laboratories contribute to provide experiences and real hands-on learning throught the equipment control to a great number of different students and universities. This study aims to propose build a remote lab automation to provide experiments of Petri nets. Experiences are drawn from a virtual and industrial systems implemented using a programmable logic controller (PLC) that is programmed in Grafcet according to predefined specifications. The system to be modeled is implemented in Petri net and the generated in a program Grafcet. The laboratory enables any user connected to the internet can send and monitor remotely commands interactively and quickly. To demonstrate the use of the laboratory, a practical experiment was carried out with the control of an ink production following step by step guidelines given to the remote user. The paper also presents a usability study conducted with ten course the student volunteers degree in Control and Automation Engineering, taking into account characteristics of understandability, learnability, operability and attractiveness of the remote laboratory.