Challenge

The purpose of the Cyber Physical Systems project is to research, design and develop secure control, monitoring, management and alarm functionality for the RTIMS sensor system. The focus is on the most challenging area: the stope area. The idea is to develop open source hardware and software tied to motes and gateways that can be incorporated into vendor products to provide RTIMS compatible solutions.

Research and development

The team developed a conceptual initial architecture for RTIMS. Research was conducted on security and motes. The team developed motes in a modular fashion with OTA upgrade functionality on a standard RTOS. A fog emulator was developed to test embedded applications and O&M issues. Research focused on data communications at the stope and visual positioning systems were integrated into the mote so that the motes functioned according to the Industrial Internet Consortium IIoT Reference Architecture. The hardware and software were open-source derivatives so that OEMS can incorporate the motes into equipment that is RTIMS-compatible.

Findings

Various lab tests were conducted and concepts proven, such as the FPGA functionality and upgrade capability. An emulator system (software) was selected with which to ‘simulate’ network connectivity and devices, in a lab environment, thereby eliminating effort and cost of performing physical/onsite tests and configurations management. A RT-OS with advanced security features was selected and tested. Various systems integration capabilities were recommended and tested with successful data uploads/downloads to and from selected IoT devices and modules.

Status

N/A