Bio-Inspired Collaborative Controllers for Multi-Level Systems

Software engineering in the automotive domain faces some outstanding challenges in terms of variability and complexity, specific customer relationship with car manufacturers and quickly and continuously changing requirements. Especially power train control systems currently evolve from classic combustions engine focused concepts towards highly divergent solutions like hybrid systems, range extenders or fully electrically driven vehicles. In this context Bosch's business units Diesel Systems (DS) and Gasoline systems (GS) merged their separated engine control unit development organizations, motivated by a growing portion of functionality independent of the combustion engine type and an increasing synergy potential in hardware and software development. As DS and GS software development evolved independently, they established different technical solutions, organizational structures and development processes - even though both adopted product line engineering principles. Since the official start in 2008, DGS-EC (Diesel Gasoline Systems Engine Control) has installed important prerequisites for common, unified software development and achieved many unification targets. This paper gives an insight to the most important experiences of this large scale product line merger, addressing challenges, enablers and solutions concerning organizational setup, process unification, architecture and product line scope definition as well as software technology harmonization.

We describe a simulated annealing approach for solving the buffer allocation problem in reliable production lines. The problem entails the determination of near optimal buffer allocation plans in large production lines with the objective of maximizing their average throughput. The latter is calculated utilizing a decomposition method. The allocation plan is calculated subject to a given amount of total buffer slots in a computationally efficient way.

A heuristic algorithm for the buffer allocation in unreliable unbalanced production lines

Mechatronic design of a leather spray system

Product line development of communication system firmware with more than 2,000 features was performed in a large-scale project that involved more than 300 engineers (at a maximum) across four distributed sites. However, since intense demands to reduce development costs and time made it prohibitive to construct core assets for all those identified features, the project screened a limited number of the features, for which core assets were constructed, and then performed partial application of product line engineering. Nevertheless, when compared with previously engineered derivative developments, when the second product of the product line was released, it was clear that the project had achieved significant improvements in quality, as well as reductions in development costs and time requirements. Automatic code generation also contributed to those improvements.

Variability management aims at taming variability in large and complex software product lines. To efficiently manage variability, it has to be modeled using formal representations, such as feature or decision models. Such models are efficient in many domains, where variability is about switching on and off features, or using parameters to customize products of the product line. However, variability can be represented in the form of a topology in domains where variability is about connecting components in a certain order, in specific interconnected hierarchies, or in different quantities.In this experience report, we explore topological variability within a case study of large-scale fire alarm systems. We identify core characteristics of the variability, derive modeling requirements, model the variability using UML2 class diagrams, and discuss the applicability of further variability modeling languages. We show that, although challenging, class diagrams can suffice to represent topological variability in order to generate a configurator tool. In contrast, modeling parallel and recursive structures, cycles, informal constraints, and orthogonal hierarchies were among the main experienced challenges that require further research.

Software product lines enable reuse of shared software across a family of products. As new products are built in the product line, new features are added. The features are units of functionality that provide services to users. Unwanted feature interactions, wherein one feature interferes with another feature’s operation, is a significant problem, especially as large software product lines evolve. Detecting feature interactions is a time-consuming and difficult task for developers. Moreover, feature interactions are often only discovered during testing, at which point costly re-work is needed. This paper proposes a similarity-based method to identify unwanted feature interactions much earlier in the development process. It uses knowledge of prior feature interactions stored with the software product line’s feature model to help find unwanted interactions between a new feature and existing features. The paper describes the framework and algorithms used to detect the feature interactions using three path similarity measures and evaluates the approach on a real-world, evolving software product line. Results show that the approach performs well, with 83% accuracy and 60% to 100% coverage of feature interactions in experiments, and scales to a large number of features.

With the large increase in small batch production and the need for greater productivity and reduced costs, automation is taking over. Dedicated automation, such as is used on large production lines, is unable to cope with quick product changes hence the use of robots is increasing. At the moment these reprogrammable assembly devices have little intelligence and little or no sensing capabilities. If robots are to expand into other production areas they will require complex and intelligent sensors. It can be seen that there is a very large potential market for vision within current robotic applications, vision would also open new areas for robotics.

This paper shows a new safety system to know the human existence in the machine moving area of large scale product lines. It is very difficult to create such a system because the operator can enter into the machine moving area without pulling out of the interlocking key, and there were not only nominated operators but also non-nominated operators. New concept of the risk management division (I : safe condition, II : uncertain condition, III : hazardous condition) was proposed to evaluate the risk reduction of such system. The risk reduction to the division I can be achieved by direct monitoring devices such as the laser scanning sensor. It can be achieved also by indirect monitoring devices such as the mechanical counter gate. On the other hand, the risk reduction to the division I cannot be achieved only by the plug, key-switch or movable guard.

Robust control, adaptive control, and adaptive control allocation methods can create resilient systems that are able to handle uncertainties as well as unknown deficiencies in actuator effectiveness. The capabilities of these methods can further enable advanced missions for autonomous space systems. Thus, in this paper, a resilient control with an adaptive control allocation method is proposed and implemented on a vehicle with 3 degrees of freedom (DoF) that operates with eight thrusters to reduce the impact of external uncertainties as well as unknown effects of the actuator. Specifically, the method includes a combination of sliding mode and novel adaptive control design elements to ensure trajectory tracking in the presence of uncertainties. Moreover, an adaptive control allocation method is also introduced to obtain the desired forces and moments in the presence of unknown effects of the actuator. The boundedness of the closed-loop system is proven with Lyapunov stability analysis. The proposed controller results are compared to a baseline sliding mode controller without adaptive control and adaptive control allocation enhancement, where different uncertainties and unknown actuator degradation, as well as failure cases, are considered within several experimental cases under external fan-induced disturbances. The experimental metrics, including integral squared tracking error, maximum tracking error, actuator effort, actuator impulse, and settling time, are provided. Across all cases, the proposed method reduces the integral squared tracking error, improves settling time, and significantly improves yaw regulation compared to a baseline sliding mode controller. This, in turn, yields a slightly increased control effort for the proposed method.

This paper proposes an adaptive control allocation method for flight systems in the presence of stuck actuator failures and model mismatch. During the flight, some unknown actuators are stuck at unknown values and at unknown time instants, which badly influence the system stability. The method can adaptively allocate the control power to the operating actuators based on the failure pattern. More realistic situation that incorporates model mismatch caused by icing, modeling errors and damage is also be considered in this paper. The traditional reference model is not appropriate, and an adaptive reference model is designed to solve this problem. The effectiveness of the proposed method is simulated by a longitudinal linear model of the NASA Generic Transport Model. The simulation results show that this method gives better tracking error performance.

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, provided the fundamental principles (Rio Declaration) and the program of action (Agenda 21) for achieving sustainable development. Sustainable chemistry is understood as the contribution of chemistry to the implementation of the Rio Declaration and Agenda 21.The conservation and management of resources for development are the main focus of interest, where chemistry will have to make a considerable contribution by more efficient and environmentally more benign chemical processes by the following: providing chemical products that are environmentally more benign and that allow us to enhance significantly the efficiency of production processes in other industrial areas combined with minor environmental impact and allowing the consumer to use resources more effectively.Innovations are investigated exemplarily for a sustainable development with regard to their ecological, economical, and social dimensions from an integrated and interdisciplinary perspective. Since base chemicals are produced in large quantities and important product lines are synthesized from them, their resource‐saving production is especially important for a sustainable development. In the long run, renewable resources that are catalytically processed could replace fossil raw materials. Separation methods existing today must be improved considerably to lower material and energy consumption. Chemistry might become the pioneer of an innovative energy technique. The design of chemical products should make possible a sustainable processing and recycling and should prevent their bioaccumulation. Methods and criteria to assess their contribution to a sustainable development are necessary. The time taken to introduce the new more sustainable processes and products has to be diminished by linking their development with operational innovation management and with efficient environmental–political control procedures.

Overview of Thin-Film Solar Cell Technologies

With the expansion of modern production line, especially the proposal of the concept of flexible production line, there are more and more production lines in the actual production realization, and more and more signals need to be controlled, which requires multiple PLCs to be connected in the production line in order to realize the required actual control operation. In this case, the configuration software can not control the production line, so it is necessary to comprehensively schedule and control the whole production line in the computer to realize the real-time control of the production line. Next, taking the German Beckhoff PLC as an example, the TwinCAT3 provided by Beckhoff is used to communicate with the underlying equipment through the computer. Due to the large number of interfaces that need to be controlled in the flexible production line, this paper adopts the adaptive mode of multi-threaded parallel processing to realize the real-time information interaction between the computer operation interface and the underlying equipment.

This paper uses the modified Backstepping (BS) Control method and the Dynamic Control Allocation (DCA) method to solve the problem that when the fighter aircraft under different flight conditions, it will be adaptively tracking different commands. Firstly, we introduce the classical Lyapunov method and classical backstepping control method, and then propose a modified backstepping control method to be applied by general flight control system model. Finally, for the problem that the common control allocation method can't compensate for ignoring the actuator dynamics, a dynamic control allocation method is introduced, and it is successfully applied to the design of the whole closed loop control system. The controller reserves the stable nonlinear term of the system, eliminates the unstable nonlinear term, and minimize the impact of ignoring the actuator dynamic through the dynamic allocation. The simulation results show that the methods in this paper have a good response. It can be implemented in different flight conditions with a good performance of command tracking and lots of robustness.