Advanced Visualization Systems in Industrial Environments: Accessible Information in Any Factory Place

Advanced Visualization Systems in Industrial Environments: Accessible Information in Any Factory Place

Manuel Pérez-Cota, Miguel R. González-Castro, María Díaz Rodríguez
Copyright: © 2018 |Pages: 34
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-3805-9.ch001
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Abstract

Today's advanced visualization systems will revolutionize the way information is perceived in industrial environments. This will help the different industrial workers to interact more efficiently with the machines, equipment, and systems installed in the industrial plant. The display devices will provide operators with all the information they need to perform their work more efficiently, as well as inform them of all the hazards and safety in their environment. Also, screen operators, thanks to the use of a single 2.5D/3D screen, will possess exhaustive knowledge of the state of the industrial process. This increases the amount on quantity and quality of information that is offered to the operator and it avoids the superfluous navigation between operation screens. This chapter explores advanced visualization systems in industrial environments.
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Evolution Of Dcs Operator Screens

DCS are devices that manage several thousands of analogic and digital signals; and also, have a distributed architecture, which increases considerably their reliability and availability. However, its essential feature is the intensive interaction with the operator, since he/she is the one who has to do the key decisions about the operation of the process under his/her control.

The first DCS marketed in 1975 by Honeywell and called TDC 2000. The operator interface, Figure 1, of the DCS of this time based on a CRT (Cathode Ray Tube), which allowed a very elementary representation of the data of the industrial process. The monitor was connected directly to the DCS or was connected via a serial communication port. This operator display showed the information in textual format and through bar diagrams, which limited the amount of process data that could be viewed. Also, the format was very unintuitive and forced the operator to do an effort to interpret the numerical values he/she perceived. Finally, the operator had a keypad and/or keyboard to send commands to the DCS.

Figure 1.

DCS Console at the end of 70s

978-1-5225-3805-9.ch001.f01

The 1980s began with the birth of the IBM PC in 1981, which became a turning point in the world of computing, as it promoted the universalization of computers at a reasonable cost. This led to the generalization of the mouse or the increased performance in microprocessors, memories, peripherals and graphics cards. This resulted in the appearance of DCS screens that included elementary diagrams of the process chart, which grouped in a hierarchical structure to facilitate the visualization of the different stages of the industrial process, “Figure 2”. However, the screens still had too much information in numerical format, which the operator had to decipher and understand in order to have an exact situation awareness of the process. The operator's command input interface transformed into the keyboard and mouse.

Figure 2.

DCS console, final 80s decade

978-1-5225-3805-9.ch001.f02

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