A real-time interface simulator for operator's training: a proposed architecture

摘要

Operator training systems are essential tools for industrial systems, particularly for those where the human error impacts on human and materials safety beyond financial losses. The work presented here is part of major research project concerned with the study of operator's behavior when facing safety critical situations. The application case concerns the supervisory control of an electricity distribution substation. This paper focuses in the first step of this project which consists in developing a realtime interface simulator of the supervisory control. It proposes an operator training simulator (OTS) architecture. The simulator's purpose is to promote the operator's immersion into a working environment close to the real one. This paper presents the simulator's architecture, which is based upon a set of formal models interconnected to form the simulator engine. Those models were built using the Colored Petri Nets (CPN) formalism. The modular architecture allows for the remote interaction through the web and offers two interfaces with the plant's control system: a virtual reality representation of the man machine interface (MMI) and a supervisory system representation. This paper discusses the architecture aspects relevant to the simulation purposes.