Technology Enhanced Learning on Industrial Automation Solutions Development

Automaton education courses usually address the development of a control system by starting from the functional specifications and, after the mathematical modelling of the control algorithms, coming to the end by means of simplified software simulations to verify the control system correctness. In industrial practise, instead, the design and implementation of an automation system mainly goes from the specifications directly to control code implementation on the specific automation target and to the verification on the real industrial plant. The first approach is structured but not feasible to deal with complexity of real size industrial applications, while the second practise is unstructured and thus having major critical problems during automation solutions development, whose consequence are high commissioning times and costs and underperforming final solutions. To bridge the gap between such approaches and to fully support the control system engineer during all steps required to conceive, study, design, implement and verify an industrial automation system, a dedicated mechatronic laboratory integrated with an innovative RTDI factory has been set up by ITIA-CNR. Such an infrastructure is strongly exploited for technology enhanced learning of industrial production engineers.