Embedded Control Systems Applied Research, Logistics Experimental System Lego

Logistics industry is one of the four cores of Hong Kong's economy.Automation technology supplied it strogly. In order to provide someassociated training kits for the training of students majoring inLogistics and automation, Industrial Center of The Hong Kong PolytechnicUniversity designed and constructed a re-configurable, modular logisticsdidactics from scratch, which is named "Lego". Its aim is to let thestudents acquired the skill accordingly. As a result, Industrial Centerof The Hong Kong Polytechnic University cooperates with the NanjingUniversity of Aeronautics & Astronautics to do some research. This paperis about this topic. After investigating and analyzing of the partner's extrinsic andparticularly intrinsic or potential requirements, this paper proposes acreative idea which allows multiple control systems co-existing andreplacing, such as PLC control, IPC control and PC104 embedded control.This paper chooses the PC104 embedded control at last from the point ofview of cost. Then this paper further presents the detailed description of the PC104control scheme including hardware configuration, Input/Outputconfiguration, I/O interface board, Operating System and softwaredevelopment tools. Lastly, the PC104 control application software implementation ofLego which accomplish the control logic is introduced based on WindowsCE by using Embedded Visual C++ of Microsoft Embedded Visual Toolspackage. The successful development of the PC104 Embedded Control Scheme andother control schemes will bring students majoring in both Logistics andIndustrial Automation a brand-new experimental platform.