Object-Oriented Computer-Aided Control System Design (CACSD) with Oberon
Summary:
The goal of our project is the design and implementation of small control system design environments for use in basic and continuing education and on small industrial problems. The typical user will be either a student or an engineer that now and then has to solve a control problem without really being a control engineer. Oberon- an object-oriented programming language and operating system is chosen as our development system.
In the first phase, small simulators for continuous, discrete time and discrete event systems have been implemented. A program package for modelling and simulation of small hydro power stations has also been developed. This package runs on the PC and Macintosh platform.
The second phase of this project is to design and implement an integrated CACSD environment - O3CACSD. This is the redevelopment of Leporello. The Object Modelling Technique (OMT), a well-known comprehensive object-oriented analysis and design approach, is applied to developing this system. High-level strategic decisions for the development of O3CACSD include:
- O3CACSD, being developed for Macintosh and PC Windows, will run on multiprocessors or a single processor with multitasks. Oberon System 3 is chosen as the operating system.
- The user interface will be an even-driven graphical user interface. Gadgets will be used for developing portable graphical user interfaces.
- Standard files or object-oriented databases will be used for data store.
We conclude that Oberon is well suited for the implementation of an integrated environment for control system design, simulation, visualization, documentation, prototyping and testing. Our systems are developed using object-oriented methodology and therefore with reliability, extensibility, flexibility and reusability.
Index terms:
computer aided control systems design, control education, integrated environments, Oberon, object-orientation, simulation.
Contacts:
Xiaobing Qiu, Walter Schaufelberger