REMOTE MONITORING AND CONTROL OF A RECONFIGURABLE SYSTEM USING A WEB INTERFACE

Abstract

The assembly system at the Research Group in Evolvable Manufacturing System (RGEMS) is designed to assemble products part by part and also ensuring good quality products. This system uses different kinds of industrial devices that are integrated in a way that the devices are dependent on each other in order to work properly on a production cycle. The disadvantage of systems of this nature is that if one of the devices malfunctions and is not attended to, the production line will get affected, which will cost time and money. In order to ensure that malfunctioning of devices is acknowledged in time, the system devices must be monitored while busy in progress; this is normally done by a system operator who uses a computer and checks if there is any change in system data using a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system. This is, however, inconvenient in that the system operator can only monitor and control the system when connected to the system’s network. Today we live in a wireless world, where anything can be accessible from anywhere in the world; internet and web technologies made all this possible. It was therefore proposed to design a system that can monitor and control the assembly system from a remote location. This system uses OLE Process Control (OPC) technology and web technology in order to read and write data to the system from the OPC server through the internet. This data is presented on a web user interface where it is viewed as analogue or digital data. The user only needs the internet browser installed to his/her computer or smart phone and also to be authorized by the system administrator in order to be able to monitor and control the system.