Hey, who's steering this truck?

Platooning may be the new way of travelling on motorways in as little as 10 years time. The European Union financed SARTRE project has carried out the first successful demonstration of its technology. Vehicle platooning is a convoy of vehicles where a professional driver in a lead vehicle is followed by one or several cars. The vehicles are not physically attached to each other and can leave the procession at any time.

Technological advances have made it possible for a vehicle to run without a driver, but is a driverless future actually desirable? Volvo Trucks says that making vehicles more autonomous is perhaps not a question of excluding drivers, but rather of emphasising their importance.

Carl Johan Almqvist at Volvo Trucks points to the autopilot systems used in aviation as a more realistic way forward for the road transport industry.

“Today you can push a button and fly on autopilot from when you leave the gate until your arrival at the other end,” he says. “But you still have a pilot. Two, in fact.”

The history of autonomous vehicles dates back to the 1970s and various projects are currently underway at universities, research institutes and high-tech companies around the world. Hundreds of thousands of driverless kilometres have been clocked up, and proponents of the technology believe that such vehicles will increase road capacity, reduce congestion, and most importantly improve road safety by eliminating driver error.

The tech liberals argue that if 90 percent of accidents are due to the human factor as statistics indicate, why not completely take the driver out of the equation?

Opponents raise concerns about the fallibility of the computerised systems - and who is legally responsible if one of these unmanned vehicles causes an accident?

Automated systems like sensors, cameras and radar for monitoring the traffic situation and the vehicle’s surroundings are regarded by many as having some advantages over humans, but Mr Almqvist at Volvo Trucks believes the safest approach is to combine the automated system’s 360-degree awareness with the professional driver’s knowledge and experience.
“We believe in the driver and appreciate that the human brain can make decisions that automatic systems struggle with,” he says. “The computer never gets tired, but it can only do things for which it is programmed. As soon as you are outside of normal situations, that is where the driver’s skill comes in. Drivers are often best placed to assess a situation and to choose between slowing down, panic braking or driving round an obstacle.”
Volvo Trucks is working on systems that support drivers in situations where they are under-stimulated, such as when stuck in a traffic jam. “When you are moving slowly your mind wanders, you aren't focused on driving and if the car in front suddenly stops, you might hit it,” says Almqvist. “These are situations where it’s a good idea to support the driver.”

Volvo’s vision of combining a well-trained professional driver with increased automation is being realised through the SARTRE (Safe Road Trains for the Environment) project.

The idea behind the project - of which Volvo is a part through its centre for research and innovation, Volvo Technology – is to develop a technology for vehicle platooning – that is, a convoy where a professional driver in a lead vehicle drives a line of other vehicles.

Each vehicle in the convoy measures the distance, speed and direction to the car in front, and adjusts accordingly.

But once in the platoon, the following drivers can relax and do other things while the platoon proceeds towards its destination under the expert guidance of the lead driver.

Platooning is expected to deliver a number of benefits - road safety will improve as the human factor is minimised, fuel consumption - and therefore also CO2 emissions - will be reduced by up to 20 percent, road congestion will be reduced as vehicles will be only a few metres apart and the drivers of the following vehicles will be able to rest, work or eat.

The technology has been successfully tested with one car following the lead vehicle.

Public acceptance and the relevant legislation may, however, be longer in coming.
“Safety is one of Volvo’s core values, so we are investing considerable effort in automation while doing it in the safest possible way,” says Mr Almqvist. “The technology is moving quickly, but getting it to work in a safe way with a human being is our ultimate aim. You should feel as safe as you do when driving yourself, even if it is a computer that is doing the work.”

Plenty of sting in this Viper

The Adept Viper™ s1700D is a high-performance six-axis robot. Maker Adept Technology says it has faster and more efficient motors to deliver higher-speed motion and increased productivity.

Like the previous Viper 1700 robot, the new s1700D offers a long reach and high payload capacity within a small footprint.

The s1700 is designed for applications that require fast and precise automation, making it ideal for material handling, machine tending, packaging, cutting and assembly.  
The unit has a reach of 1.7m and a payload capacity of 20kg. 

This newest Viper is seamlessly integrated with Adept’s portfolio. Interchangeable robots and controllers ease deployment, support and maintenance, including improving parts availability.
The s1700D comes with advanced self-diagnostics for proactive monitoring and quick troubleshooting. It features Adept ACE™ software, which deploys the robot through a user-friendly interface. The Ethernet TCP/IP capability allows the robot to be controlled through a PC, PLC or controller.

“The Viper s1700D strengthens Adept’s food packaging product offerings. We’re seeing tremendous growth in the use of robots in food packaging applications around the world, and this newest Viper will deliver enormous value to these customers as well as others,” says senior vice president of sales and marketing John Boutsikaris.
“Our commitment to continuous development is focused on helping our customers improve their operations. The Viper s1700D aligns with Adept's strategy to deliver high-performance, end-to-end packaging solutions.”

Adept provides specialised, cost-effective robotics systems and services to high-growth markets including packaging, medical, disk drive/electronics and solar as well as to traditional industrial markets including machine tool automation and automotive components.
The company has been receiving pre-orders for the Viper s1700D and shipped the first system on the day of its release, December 22 last year. Currently, the company has Viper s1700D orders to be fulfilled up to March 2012.

For more information:
Lauren Bucher
Email: lauren [dot] bucher [at] adept [dot] com
Visit: www.adept.com
For the s1700D visit: www.adept.com/products/robots/6-axis/viper-s1700d

Automation control and safety system integration improves operations

The more designers can integrate the safety functions of a control system with non-safety functions, the better the opportunity to minimise equipment redundancies, improve productivity and minimise costs. Hardware costs can be reduced because standard and safety portions of the application can share system components.
Economic factors – the aim to increase the bottom line without compromising safety – are driving the evolution of safety systems from older hard-wired solutions to contemporary networked integrated configurations.
Without the need for a separate safety controller, integrated safety systems use a single programming software package.
This eliminates the need to write and coordinate multiple programs on different controllers, simplifying software development and reducing training and support costs.
A single development environment also reduces the risk of expensive redevelopment. For example, if a control engineer needs to scale from one line to three, it’s as simple as porting the necessary application from one to the next. Fewer components also mean smaller panel enclosures, saving money on control cabinets and floor space.

Integration via CIP Safety
Historically, seamless communication was nearly impossible because no single network could integrate safety and standard control systems while also enabling the seamless transport of data across multiple plant-floor physical networks.
The introduction of the Common Industrial Protocol (CIP) – an application protocol for industrial networking that is independent of the physical network – was an important step in the evolution of integrated safety.
The CIP protocol provides a set of common services for control, configuration, collection and sharing across all of the CIP networks – DeviceNet, ControlNet and EtherNet/IP.
In the past, a safety risk in one section of a machine could result in the entire machine shutting down because the standard system had limited knowledge of the safety event.
CIP Safety allows the control and safety systems to coexist on the same network and share data between the two types of applications.
This enables engineers, for example, to perform zone control where one zone of the machine is brought to a safe state while other zones continue to operate.
Unlike conventional systems, the integration of the safety and standard control systems provides operators and maintenance personnel with visibility to all machine events – including safety events – via the machine or the human-machine interface (HMI).
With the insight provided by the integrated system, plant personnel can respond quickly to return the machine to full production.
CIP Safety also minimises the installation of expensive and difficult-to-maintain gateways between each network.
Before the development of safety networks, engineers often had to use smaller systems or minimise their performance requirements because it was difficult to hard-wire interlocks and relay-based safety logic into a complete automation system.
Engineers are now able to integrate their devices on common physical network segments and allow safety and standard information to flow between devices and controllers.

Next-generation safety control
Recent developments in integrated safety involve leveraging the benefits of a common control platform and extending them into a more compact, scalable form factor.
This gives users more design flexibility, allowing them to apply integrated safety functionality across a broader range of applications, including many midrange applications in which a larger controller previously would have been excessive or cost-prohibitive.
The new Allen-Bradley Compact GuardLogix programmable automation controller (PAC) from Rockwell Automation performs all machine control functions – including drive, motion and high-speed sequential control – while simultaneously executing SIL 2 and SIL 3 safety functions. Developed for midrange applications the multidiscipline controller offers designers safety functionality previously found only in larger integrated systems.
Integrated safety also offers the advantages of a common programming environment, which helps reduce the time and costs of design, configuration, start-up, and maintenance. With a single software program managing both safety and standard functionality, engineers no longer need to manually separate standard and safety memory, or worry about partitioning logic to isolate safety.

More streamlined designs
These design productivity benefits led Amcor, a global packaging manufacturer, to implement a new integrated safety solution at its Revesby, Australia, aluminum can production plant. The original separate hard-wired standard controllers on the plant’s 11 body-maker and trimming machines were replaced with individual integrated safety controllers.
An EtherNet/IP connection provides interlocking between machines and links the integrated safety controllers to the factory’s supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system. The combination of distributed I/O and a CIP Safety network helped reduce site installation and wiring time. The integrated development environment allowed engineers to develop the standard and safety control system code concurrently, which saved significant time.
With the integrated control architecture already in place, developing and expanding the system is much easier.

Improved control and consistency
New software tools, such as high-integrity Add-On Instructions (AOIs), are contributing to even more accurate and efficient safety system designs. AOIs encapsulate code that can be pre-validated modules and easily reused. This promotes consistency between projects, helps simplify debugging and troubleshooting, and minimises the risk of coding errors.
These high-integrity AOIs employ a signature feature to help designers protect data from being altered accidentally or intentionally. The signature feature lets them know whether an AOI definition has been modified. This revision control capability is critical in highly regulated industries where manufacturers need to maintain consistency to meet regulatory requirements and protect intellectual property.
The future of integrated safety points to more options and more flexibility to apply safety technology to meet specific needs. As safety and standard components continue to become more seamlessly integrated into control system designs, implementing safety will no longer be a separate discipline but rather a concurrent and more natural part of the design process. In turn, these innovations will help keep workers and machines safer while boosting profits.

For more information:
Rockwell Automation
Tel: 09 276 3070
Visit: www.rockwellautomation.co.nz