microcontroller based robotics

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION 1

Microcontroller-Based Roboticsand SCADA Experiments

Sava ahin and Yalin ler, Member, IEEE

AbstractThe recently rapid increase in research and develop-ment in automation technology has led to a gap between educa-tion and industry. Although developing countries need to keep in

touch with the latest developments, that poses some difficulties for

industrial automation education, such as cost, lack of student moti-vation, and insufficient laboratory infrastructure. Low-cost exper-imental setups may overcome many of these challenges. This paperdescribes how supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA)

and robotics experiments in control and automation education canbe conducted at reasonable cost. These setups consist of a fluid

tank, a Cartesian robot with a three-axis robot arm, and serial,parallel, USB, and TCP/IP communication ports. These experi-

ments were developed and used in control and automation educa-tion in the Automation Laboratory of Ege Technical and Business

College, Ege University, zmir, Turkey. The presented experimentswere also quantitatively evaluated using the one-way ANOVA teston the examresults, and qualitatively evaluated by a discussion ses-sion and survey. The results indicated that student performance

improved when microcontroller-based experimental setups wereused, and thatincreasing the complexity of experiments also helped

improve students academic success.

Index TermsControl engineering education, digital con-

trol, robots, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA)

systems.

I. INTRODUCTION

RESEARCH and development in control and automationtechnology for industrial applications has increasedrapidly to meet industrys evolving needs in control and au-tomation systems. The use of such systems is an importantindicator of the level of industrialization of developing coun-tries. Control and automation technology laboratories play avital role in this development and serve as a point of interac-tion between industry and control education. In developingcountries, there are several problems for using control and

automation experimental setups and experiments [1]. First,control and automation courses need a significant budget forinstrumentation and automation equipment. Second, manycommercial automation setups may not gain students attention

Manuscript received August 04, 2012; revised November 06, 2012; acceptedFebruary 05, 2013.

S. ahin is with the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering,ili Campus, zmir Katip elebi University, 35620 zmir, Turkey (e-mail:[email protected]).

Y. ler is with the Department of Biomedical Engineering, i li Campus,zmir Katip elebi University, 35620 zmir, Turkey.

Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available onlineat http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TE.2013.2248062

over the general run of experiments. Third, real industrial pro-cesses cannot be realized in the laboratory. These problems can

be locally overcome by using low-cost experimental setups [2].In previous studies, such laboratories have been established

with controllers and instrumentation equipment such as micro-controllers, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), industrial

personal computers (PCs), and sensors and actuators [2][5].Microcontrollers that have a defined inputoutput interfacelogic to physically connect the devices and a program to accessthe device functions are widely used for control applications,

usually for implementing controllers together with digital andanalog input interfaces [3], [6]. In contrast, PLCs are used todirectly control real processes with sensors and actuators [4].Alternatively, industrial PCs are also used to control real pro-cesses via inputoutput ports [7].

In control and automation systems, supervisory control anddata acquisition (SCADA) can be defined as a multidisciplinaryfield, comprising electrical, electronics, instrumentation,mechanical, control, and computer sciences [8]. This is ahighly flexible and expandable area, covering real-time dataacquisition (DAQ), managing with a humanmachine inter-face (HMI), and interacting with the World Wide Web (WWW),

wide area networks (WANs), local area networks (LANs), andPCs [9], [10]. Thus, SCADA courses play an important role incontrol and automation education at engineering departments inuniversities and technical colleges [11][13]; their syllabi andexperiments must be carefully chosen to meet industrial needs.

Previous studies have shown that LabVIEW graphical pro-gramming language (GPL) can be used as a simulation programthat builds some specific curricular and cognitive skills [12]such as analyzing the process, implementing a GPL, and under-standing LabVIEW objects and SCADA/HMI (operators inter-face and data-logging) applications [9]. Moreover, LabVIEWvirtual instruments (VIs) can reduce the mistakes or accidents,and the need for repair, inherent in using actual instruments and

automation equipment [14].Intheworkpresented here, a different approach is taken: New

microcontroller-based experimental setups and experimentswere designed for a SCADA Systems course to meet industrialneeds at low cost, using Transmission Control Protocol andInternet Protocol (TCP/IP), graphical user interfaces (GUIs),and universal serial bus (USB) ports. USB ports have recently

become essential to establishing communication for roboticsand SCADA systems. These experimental setups are gen-eral-purpose, well-designed, updated implementations, tailoredfor seven applications of VI-aided SCADA systems. Althoughsome specific designs have already been presented [2], [5],

such a suite of detailed, well-designed experimental setups

0018-9359/$31.00 2013 IEEE
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2 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION

powered by current industrial applications has yet to be de-scribed. The rest of this paper is organized as follows.Section IIgives a brief description of the educational integration of thedesigns into the curriculum. Section III explains the softwareselected, the hardware designed to go with this software, andthe components of the new SCADA experiments. Section IVgives the results achieved of both quantitative and qualitativeevaluations. Finally, these results are discussed.

II. EDUCATIONAL INTEGRATION

The SCADA course SCADA Systems plays a funda-mental role in the two-year curriculum of the Control andAutomation Program at Ege Technical and Business College(ETBC), Ege University, zmir, Turkey. The courses leadingup to SCADA Systems, which is given in the fourth and lastsemester of the curriculum, include Basic Electronics, DigitalElectronics, Electronic Measurement Techniques and Safety,Computer Aided Circuit Design, Sensor and Transducers, Mi-

crocontrollers, Process Measurement I & II, Process Control,Programmable Logic Controllers, and Microcontroller-BasedControl; each of these recommends textbooks as supplementarymaterial on their course Web page. Students thus begin theSCADA Systems course with a uniform background knowl-edge provided by these earlier courses. For example, in ProcessControl, students are taught the standards of the InstrumentSociety of America (ISA) such as Instrumentation Symbols andIdentification (ISA5.1), Binary Logic Diagrams for ProcessOperations (ISA-5.2), Graphic Symbols for Distributed Con-trol/Shared Display Instrumentation, Logic and ComputerSystems (ISA-5.3), and Instrument Loop Diagrams (ISA-5.4);

these standards are necessary to establish communication forSCADA.

The learning objectives of the course, updated in 2010, arethat students should do the following:

1) understand the fundamental concepts of a SCADA systemand its various components such as electronics, computers,and communication systems;

2) be able to configure the SCADA software package pro-gram and determine the needs for the SCADA system fromgiven information;

3) learn communication protocols used for computerizedsystem control;

4) be able to install and run real application setups using thesoftware;5) be able to analyze the overall SCADA system software and

the various elements of communication-based hardware.SCADA Systems, given in the fourth semester, is given in

one 4-h session per week. Its syllabus is given in Table I.

III. EXPERIMENTS

Microcontroller-based experimental setups were designedto carry out seven consecutive experiments. The first fourof these experimentson the RS232 serial port, IEEE 1284D-25 parallel port, the use of a digital thermometer, and tem-

perature and liquid-level instrumentation [15], [16]wereexplained in a previous study [2]. Three new experimentson

TABLE ISYLLABUS OF SCADA SYSTEMS

using a USB port, controlling a USB-based Cartesian robot,and controlling a TCP/IP-based robot armare explained inSections III-AIII-C.

A. Software Selection

The choice of control and automation software is very im-portant issue for engineering applications and education. Theselection criteria were explained in detail in a recent study [8].The LabVIEW 8.5 evaluation copy (to use USB and TCP/IP

ports) was chosen for SCADA education in the SCADA Sys-tems course because of its minimal cost.

B. Experimental Setups

The laboratory is equipped with 10 experimental setups,

each comprising a PC, an application set, a multimeter, anoscilloscope, and necessary software. The PCs, with a Core23300 MHz processor and 2 GB of memory, run MS WindowsXP Professional and LabVIEW 8.5 [17] evaluation software.

An experimental SCADA system consists of DAQ hardwareand development software. DAQ hardware, composed of ananalog-to-digital converter (ADC) and a digital-to-analogconverter (DAC), is used to acquire and control the phys-ical phenomena with sensors and actuators, respectively. VIsin LabVIEW are commonly used in programming SCADAsystems for logging data from a DAQ system with a flexibleGUI [18].

A peripheral interface circuit (PIC)-based SCADA system ispreferred for experiments because PLC-based systems are veryexpensive to use for education [19]. PIC-based experimentalsetups serve as the signal conditioner, data acquirer, and con-troller for interface circuits. Their internal software supports theGUI developed in LabVIEW.

In this study, three different PIC microcontroller boardswere designed and used in experiments: The PIC16F877,PIC18F4550, and PIC18F452 are used for serial and parallel

port-based experimental setups, USB-based experimentalsetups, and TCP/IP-based experimental setups, respectively.These microcontrollers include internal flash program memory,a large area of RAM, internal EEPROM, and eight channelADCs. They are thus suitable for real-time systems and moni-toring applications [6].
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AHIN AND LER: MICROCONTROLLER-BASED ROBOTICS AND SCADA EXPERIMENTS 3

TABLE IIGRADING SCHEME SHOWING THE MARKS AVAILABLE FOR EACH PART OF THE SEVEN EXPERIMENTS: 1RS232 SERIAL PORT COMMUNICATION; 2IEEE

1284 PARALLEL PORT COMMUNICATION; 3DIGITAL THERMOMETER; 4TEMPERATURE & LIQUID-LEVEL CONTROL; 5USB PORT COMMUNICATION;6USB-BASED CARTESIAN ROBOT; 7TCP/IP-BASED ROBOT ARM. (N/A MEANS THAT ITEM IS NOT PART OF THAT EXPERIMENT)

C. Experiments

LabVIEW software is used to implement the front panel andthe block diagram. The block diagram holds the data flow andgraphical source codes, which is useful for designing an HMIfor robotics and automation systems. The front panel providesswitches, counters, timers, and graphs in order to monitor and

control the experiments. The block diagram supplies data flowand function tools with connectors, terminals, and wires. Eachof the seven consecutive SCADA experiments is carried out infour distinct stages: 1) hardware properties; 2) software proper-ties; 3) integration of the hardwareand thesoftware; and 4) eval-uation of lab reports. The students were introduced to the exper-imental setups and PIC units and were then requested to developtheir own PIC program and front-panel GUI with VI programsin LabVIEW. Table II shows the contributions of each step forevaluation of the experiment. Students are allowed to hand theirreports in any official time in the following week.

Implementations of the first four experiments are designed to

use a PIC16F877-based hardware of the simple setup describedin the authors previous paper [2]. Three additional advancedexperiments (#5#7) use a USB port, a USB-based Cartesianrobot, and a TCP/IP-based robot arm.

1) Implementation of the USB Port: This experiment con-nects the PIC18F4550 board and graphical programming usingLabVIEW via a USB port. Students are expected to read thestatus of switches and send these values to the LEDs throughthe USB port. This experiment helps students to understand the

basics of the DAQ and digital communication protocols using aUSB port.

2) Implementation of the USB-Based Cartesian Robot: Thisexperiment connects the PIC18F4550 board with a general-pur-

pose step motor driver card to the USB port, implementing real-time controlling and monitoring for a three-axis system. The

Cartesian robot has three axes, and thus has three degrees offreedom (DOF); these -, -, and -axes are controlled by a mi-crocontroller board and step motor drivers via the LabVIEW-designed GUI. Limit switches are used to prevent it passing the

borders of each axis. Students follow these steps.a) Generate a USB-HMI driver using the VISA Driver De-

velopment Wizard and VISA Interactive Controller in

National Instruments VISA program.b) Adjust the reference point to zero for the three axes using

the reset button.c) Control the - - -axes of the Cartesian robot via the GUI.d) Transfer the axes coordinate and limit value data between

the computer and microcontroller card.e) Control the step motors with pulse-width modulation

(PWM) using a proportional control algorithm.f) Monitor the GUI.

This experiment is designed as an advanced-level applicationto show students how a complex real-time application can bedesigned.

3) Implementation of the TCP/IP-Based Robot Arm: Thelast experiment is a multiexperimental system designed for con-necting to the PIC18F452 board via TCP/IP communication

protocol, using the TCP/IP port. The robot arm with its threeDOF and its gripper are driven by servomotors via a micro-controller board and a LabVIEW-designed GUI. In addition,this experiment also includes temperature readings and an 8-bitinput/output (I/O). The thermometer part of this experimentalsetup is realized using a DS1820 sensor. The 8-bit I/O part isimplemented as were the serial port in Exp. #1 and the USB portin Exp. #5. The embedded TCP/IP port means the experimentalsystem can be used for WAN and LAN applications. Studentsfollow these steps.

a) Generate TCP/IP and uni-datagram protocol (UDP)drivers using LabVIEW function blocks.
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TABLE IIISTATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF EXAMINATION GRADES ( NUMBER OF

STUDENTS)

Fig. 1. Mean grades of all enrolled students (lower line) and students passingthe course (upper line).

b) Control the robot arm via a LabVIEW-designed GUI.

c) Control servomotors with PWM used as proportional con-trol for their states.d) Monitor the GUI.e) Read the status of switches and send this value to the

LEDs through the TCP/IP port.This experiment is also designed as a SCADA-based roboticsapplication.

IV. EVALUATION

The experimental setup and the suite of seven experimentswere evaluated both quantitatively and qualitatively.

A. Quantitative Evaluation

The exam results over eight years of the SCADA Systemscourse were analyzed using SPSS statistical software. In thefirstthree of these years, theexperimentalsetup was not in place. Thenext two years featured the simple setup (Experiments 14), andthe last three featured the complete setup (Experiments 17).The course had the same teacher, this papers first author, forall eight years. All the exams were prepared and graded bythis teacher; their questions were determined by consideringBlooms Taxonomy, a classification of educational learning ob-

jectives [20]. Therefore, throughout this period, the exams maybe considered to be as similar as possible, and the experimentalsetup can be thought of as the major factor affecting student per-formance in the course. Table III gives the statistical results.

Fig. 1 shows the mean grades over eight years of both allenrolled students and of the students who passed the exam. As

TABLE IVTEST OF THE HOMOGENEITY OF VARIANCES

TABLE V

ANOVA-TEST RESULTS FOR DIFFERENCES TO SHOW THE EFFECTS OF SETUPON STUDENTS EXAM RESULTS

TABLE VISTATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF EXAMINATION GRADES ( NUMBER OF

STUDENTS)

can be seen in Table III, there was a substantial improvement in

mean grades after the introduction to the laboratory both of thesimple setup and advanced setup.

To analyze the statistical differences over these eight years,further statistical procedures were followed [2]. The statisticaldistributions of the eight-year grades were assumed to be normalupon visual inspection. Then the homogeneity of variances ofgrades had to be tested. TheLevene statistic is probablythe mostcommonly used test for this purpose in normal-distributed data.Applying this test (Table IV), the value shows that thehypothesis on the homogeneity of variances is valid.

A one-way ANOVA analysis was performed at 0.05 signif-icance level using the SPSS software package. Table V gives

the test result as , which means that there is a statis-tically significant difference between years. However, this testdoes not indicate which years differ from others. To see this,Tukeys honestly significant difference (HSD) test, a multiplecomparison test in statistics, is applied, as in Table VI.

These results classify student exam performance in threedistinct groups: no experimental setup, the simple setup, andthe advanced setup. The last rows show the statistical signifi-cance for each group. If the significance is greater than 0.05,that group may be assumed to be statistically indistinguishable.For example, student grades for 20032004, 20042005, and20052006 must be considered statistically similar. Thosefor 20062007 and 20072008 and those of 20082009,20092010 and 20102011 are also similar. However, thosefor 20052006 and 20062007 cannot be considered similar.
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AHIN AND LER: MICROCONTROLLER-BASED ROBOTICS AND SCADA EXPERIMENTS 5

The exam results indicate that there were statistically signif-icant improvements both after the simple setup and after theadvanced setup.

B. Qualitative Evaluation

A five-question survey was given at the end of the semester

to obtain a qualitative evaluation of the performance of the ex-perimental setup and experiments, using a Likert scale of VeryPoor, Poor, Average, Good, and Excellent. The questions wereas follows.

1) Do you think this course provides a deep understanding of,and application experience in, the subject of interest?

2) Do you think the educational materials used in the contextof this course are adequate?

3) How does this course affect your motivation to continueyour education in the field of automation?

4) Do you think this course provided you with the experiencenecessary for your professional life?

5) How useful did you find this course in your automationeducation?

The survey results are summarized in Fig. 2(a) for thesimple experimental setup and in Fig. 2(b) for the advancedexperimental setups. The answers to the first and second ques-tions show that most students agree that the SCADA Systemscourse helps them achieve the required desired level in termsof knowledge, experience, and educational materials. For thethird question, 72% of students say that the course strongly mo-tivated them in the field of automation technologies. Answersto the fourth question are in a somewhat different category inthat students do not as yet have a professional life; this couldaccount for the higher level of answers of Poor and Average.

For the last question, students evaluated the lectures and foundthem adequate. Responses to the last question are very similarto those for the first three questions.

V. DISCUSSION

Turkey, and other developing countries, must keep up withmodern technology for their industries to be able to compete inworld markets. Since SCADA and other hardware devices may

be beyond the budgets of the educational institutions of suchcountries, it is crucial to be able to implement teaching based onmore affordable simulation tools. This paper has described the

teaching of the concepts of industrial automation, data acquisi-tion, instrumentation, using widely used communication ports(such as serial, parallel, USB, and TCP/IP), virtual instrumen-tation, and its development with LabVIEW. Acquiring experi-mental knowledge of these matters by means of seven labora-tory experiments helps students to integrate the theoretical con-cepts. Although an evaluation copy of LabVIEW was used inthe study to achieve minimal cost, the Internet-based commu-nication technologies that are an important part of distributedsystems such as SCADA [17] were also included. As a result,the experimental setups offer a good alternative to commercialones.

In addition, although this study had the goal of designing anexperimental setup and experiments for the undergraduate level,these are also suitable for use in degree programs in electrical,

Fig. 2. Student responses to each survey question for the (a) simple setup and(b) advanced setups.

electronics, and control engineering in courses in control, instru-mentation, and SCADA. The experimental setup is also suitablefor project-based learning systems, and so can easily be inte-grated by engineeringinstitutions and technical colleges that use

project-based learning strategies. The course was modified overan eight-year period to achieve the desired learning outcomes.

The exam results, analyzed in Table VI, indicate that there

were three different statistically signifi

cant groups. It couldbe concluded that using experimental setups is essential tounderstanding technical subjects, and the more complex theexperiments, the greater the students success. In addition,students stressed in oral feedback sessions that complexapplications would help in increasing their motivation andself-confidence. Such setups can therefore be used for demon-stration sessions to attract student attention and improve theirmotivation. Almost all student feedback was positive exceptthat from students who had poor class attendance. Nevertheless,

both the experimental setup and the experimental content havebeen gradually improved on the basis of this feedback.

Because of the limitations of the evaluation version ofLabVIEW, students were not introduced to the concepts ofreading input data from the database and writing output data to
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the database, nor to some other important concepts such as SQLoperations and database security. This lack was addressed byrecommending textbooks related to these topics [21], [22] andwill be further addressed by their inclusion in graduate-levelcourses.

Implementation details of both hardware and software areavailable upon request from the second author via e-mail andwill be more widely available as soon as the course Web site isonline.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors would like to thank M. B. ner, B. Kadiolu, andO. Ergnay for their contributions during implementation of thesetups, and M. lmez and M. B. Selek for encouragement toextend the study and to write this paper.

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Sava ahin received the B.Sc. degree in electronics and communication en-gineering from Kocaeli University, Kocaeli, Turkey, in 1996, the M.Sc. degreein electrical and electronics engineering from Ege University, Izmir, Turkey, in2003, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and electronics engineering fromDokuzEyll University, Konak, Turkey, in 2010.

He was an Instructor with the Department of Control and Automation, EgeBusiness and Technical College, Ege University, from 2000 to 2012. He has

been working as Assistant Professor with the Departmentof Electricaland Elec-tronics Engineering, zmir Katip elebi University, Izmir, Turkey, since 2012.His main research interests are in the fields of control systems, industrial au-tomation, chaotic systems, and artificial neural networks.

Yalin ler (S09M11) received the B.Sc. degree in electrical and electronicsengineering from Anadolu University, Eskiehir, Turkey, in 1993, the M.Sc.degree in electronics and communication engineering from Sleyman DemirelUniversity, Isparta, Turkey, in 1996, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and elec-tronics engineering from Dokuz Eyll University, zmir, Turkey, in 2009.

From 1993 to 2000, he was a Lecturer with Burdur Vocational School,Sleyman Demirel University. He worked as a Software Engineer from 2000to 2002. He was a Research Assistant with Zonguldak Karaelmas University,Zonguldak, Turkey, from 2002 to 2003 and with Dokuz Eyll University from2003 to 2010. He was an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electricaland Electronics Engineering, Zonguldak Karaelmas University, from 2010 to2012. He has been working as an Assistant Professor with the Departmentof Biomedical Engineering, zmir Katip elebi University, Izmir, Turkey,since 2012. His main research interests are in the fields of biomedical signal

processing, computational neuroscience, genetic algorithms, and microcon-troller-based board design.
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microcontroller based robotics

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