Learning Process Control Automation through a Smartphone Application
Learning Process Control Automation through a Smartphone Application

Summary/Abstract: Because of the accessibility of smartphones, students tend to spend more and more time using applications on these devices. This can be exploited in the development of new teaching applications, turning learning into something more attractive, and increasing the knowledge assimilation capacity. An important indicator in the evaluation of serious games is the experience gathered by the players in different stages of interaction between them and the context of the game. The main aim of the paper is to present a mobile application that implements the behaviour of industrial processes, in our case a thermo-electric power plant. This graphical application is developed as a game, optimized for Android devices. The player can execute specific commands for controlling the plant: turning on or off equipment like coal mills, water pumps, combustion air vents, he can change the functioning regime, and he can configure the parameters for automatic control. He must supervise the correct operation of the plant and interfere in case of emergency situations. The application simulates the real time for a predefined period and keeps the student active and connected to the process during this entire time. The level of optimisation achieved at the end of this period can even be used as a score for evaluation of his practical abilities. This application will help students understand the physical and chemical factors involved in the plant’s functioning and how their decisions can affect the performance. They will learn not only how to tune control loops, but also how their decisions can affect the plant stability, rejection of perturbations, and optimal operation. As the game fundaments effects resulting from real time decisions, an important aspect to be considered is the correct implementation and fast rendering of the computations needed for the real physical processes simulation. The developed system can be improved by adding new functionalities, like simulations of major system failures caused by hazardous situations and can be adapted for real operators training. The proposed method adapted from game-based teaching provides important benefits in this field from traditional methods.

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