System for control data visualization and generation
This Program is a component of the system for
creating control
programs.
Follows the description of the Visualization component
Main function of the visualization component is to
display/visualize the gathered in real-time data. The data is
gathered from once or more instances of the interpreter program,
communication is done through network connections, which allows
gathering information from remotly running control
programs. Three main data visualization window types are:
- Window for visualizing boolean variables.
- Window for visualizing Floating-point and integer
variables – example of visualization of such variables can be
seen on Picture 2. Some of the notable fact about this
visualization ability is that window’s variable ranges are
scaled depending on the value of the visualized variables. Also
when the window’ size is changed by the user the coordinate
ranges are scaled to allow more detail view of the
displayed. Changing visualization window’ size and rearranging
multiple visualization windows allows multiple variables to be
viewed at the same time and analysis to be done on their
interdependence.
- Sets of data variables. One example can be seen on Picture
3. The windows can be configured to paint graphic animations
depending on the visualized data. The purpose of this is to
approximate structure of the analyzed process and allow for
easier interpretation of the behavior of the variables. The
painted graphic is animated by the visualization program
depending on the values of the specified set of data
variables. For example one visualized object can consist of a
number of elements, some of them fixed size/position and others
changing their size/position depending on the value of a certain
variable, during configuration of this visualization window each
part is described and if its moving part its connected to a
certain variable and the type of movement the part should be
doing (is it linear or rotating movement, or it could be
dimension changing). When the system is run the fixed visualized
elements are positioned on their places and the moving elements
are drawn depending on the values of the received variables, as
these variables change the moving elements are updated in
real-time to reflect these changes. The system has been applied
in visualizing different systems. One such application is
visualization of the movement of a simulation of a portal crane.
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Picture 1.
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Picture 2.
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Picture 3.
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Another important feature of the system is that one variable can
be visualized by a number of windows, i.e. while watching the
animation of the behavior of the system some of the variables
used in the animation can also be displayed in another window as
a floating-point/integer variables, such example can be seen on
Picture 4.
All gathered data can be logged in a file and later used for
replicating the visualization session. Another feature is that
the program has the capability to send data to the control
program. The data to send can be gathered from the following
sources:
- User controls: checkboxes (Boolean data), sliders
(floating-point/integer data), radio buttons (for grouped
Boolean variables where the sum should always be 1), textbox.
- Special module designed to send multiple messages at
once. Example can be seen on Picture 5.
- Read the sent data from file, the data is injected at
user-specified rate, thus simulating as if data is being
received from external sensors. Also data received from the
interpreter can be saved and later use that data for sending it
to the control program in order to reconstruct a test case.
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Picture 5.
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2 Dec 2006
