JP2003186501A - Equipment-operating system - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an equipment-operating system, capable of preventing industrial equipment from misoperations and innapropriate operations by grasping the alignment of operating positions with the equipment to be operated. <P>SOLUTION: The system for operating a plurality of industrial equipment 4a, 4b and 4c by using a movable portable terminal 1 comprises the portable terminal 1, access points 2a and 2b, and a controller 3, wherein the controller 3 controls the industrial equipment 4a, 4b and 4c according to requests from the portable terminal 1 and includes a time-distance conversion database 6, a position information database 7 and an operable information database 8 for specifying the operating position of the portable terminal and for determining whether the industrial equipment 4i (i=a, b, c) are operable. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2003,JPO

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a device operating system for remotely controlling a device using a portable terminal.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, when operating industrial equipment at a site such as a plant or a factory, it has become more and more common to remotely issue an operation instruction wirelessly using a portable terminal. This has made it possible to operate each industrial device regardless of the operation location. In addition, compared to the case where a large-scale operation terminal, which is a large housing, is installed in the vicinity of each industrial device and is connected to each industrial device by wire, wiring laying and maintenance of the operation terminal do not occur. Investment and maintenance costs are also being reduced. When operating an industrial device with such a portable terminal, the operation can be performed even when the industrial device to be operated is in a place where it cannot be visually confirmed.

[0003]

However, since the device cannot be visually recognized and the device can be operated, there is a possibility that an unintended operation of an unintended industrial device may be performed.

The present invention has been made to solve the above problems, and an object thereof is to contribute to prevention of unintended operation of unintended industrial equipment.

[0005]

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention according to claim 1 provides a portable terminal for making an operation request to a device, and an installation position specified in advance in accordance with the operation request from the portable terminal. In a device operation system having a control unit for controlling the device, a position detection unit for detecting the position of the mobile terminal and a device provided in the control unit and controllable from the detected position of the mobile terminal are provided. The gist is to have a device specifying means for specifying.

Therefore, the equipment operating system of the present invention can prevent unintended operation of unintended industrial equipment.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, in the first aspect of the invention, the position detecting means is preset with a different relay device for communication between the portable terminal and the control means.
The gist of the present invention is to install the mobile terminal at various locations and detect the position of the mobile terminal based on the difference in response time between the mobile terminal and the control means via the relay device.

Therefore, it is possible to accurately specify the operation location of the movable portable terminal.

According to a third aspect of the present invention, in the first or second aspect of the present invention, the position detecting means stores operable information that stores whether or not the operation of the device requested to operate the position of the portable terminal is stored. It is the gist to specify controllable equipment by using.

Therefore, it is possible to perform fine device control in consideration of the situation at the site.

A fourth aspect of the present invention is based on the third aspect of the invention, and the gist is that the device specifying means transmits information on whether or not the operation is possible to the portable terminal.

Therefore, the operator can confirm the operation-requesting device. Further, the operator can immediately move to a place where the device can be visually recognized and give an operation instruction.

[0013]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a device operating system according to an embodiment of the present invention. This system uses a mobile terminal 1 that is movable and uses a plurality of industrial devices 4a, 4a,
This is a system for operating b, 4c, and includes a portable terminal 1, two access points 2a and 2b, and a controller 3.
It is a structure having.

The two access points 2a and 2b are
It is a wireless relay device for communicating between the portable terminal 1 and a controller 3 described later.

The controller 3 controls the industrial equipment 4a, 4b, 4c in response to a request from the portable terminal 1, specifies the operation position of the portable terminal 1, and operates the industrial equipment 4i (i). = A, b, c) is provided with a time distance conversion database 6, a position information database 7 and an operable information database 8 in order to determine whether or not the operation is possible.

The position information database 7 is a database having two-dimensional position information of each industrial equipment, access point, obstacle, etc. installed in the plant. For example, although FIG. 2 shows the inside of the plant by two-dimensional coordinates, in such a situation, the position information database 7 has the industrial equipment 4a at (4, 17) and the access point 2a at (9, 11). ), The obstacle 9 is (16,1
1), (17, 11), and (18, 11), respectively.

The time-distance conversion database 6 is a database used for specifying the operation position of the portable terminal 1, and a response via the access point 2i (i = a, b) between the controller 3 and the portable terminal 1 in advance. The correspondence table of time and distance created by measuring the time and the distance from the access point 2i (i = a, b) at that time is stored in a database. By using this correspondence table, the error can be corrected and the operation position can be accurately obtained.

For example, FIG. 3 shows a method of specifying a position when the response time via the access point 2a is 200 ms and the response time via the access point 2b is 240 ms. If the distance corresponding to the response time of 200 ms via the access point 2a is L1 and the distance corresponding to the response time of 240 ms via the access point 2b is L2 from the time distance conversion database 6 described above, the access point 2a
Is L1 and the intersection with the distance L2 from the access point 2b is the location 10 of the portable terminal 1.

The operable information database 8 is a database used in the process of determining whether the operation is possible, which will be described later, and is a database showing an operable area (visible area) from a specific operation place. For example,
In the situation as shown in FIG. 4, the operable area 5a (the position is (3, 3)) is the shaded area 11, and the inoperable area is the unshaded area 1.
It is 2. Therefore, the operable information database 8 indicates that the industrial equipment 4a is located at the position (3, 3) of the operating place 5a.
It stores information that the position (4, 17) is operable and the position (17, 17) of the industrial device 4C is inoperable. Further, in the example of FIG. 5, the operable information database 8
Similarly, at the position (18, 3) of the operation place 5b, the information that the position (4, 17) of the industrial equipment 4a is inoperable and the position (11, 4) of the industrial equipment 4b is operable is stored. ing.

Next, the operation of the present system will be described with reference to the flow charts shown in FIGS. 6 and 7 showing the operation of the present embodiment.

First, the operator operates a certain operation place 5i (i =
a, b) from the portable terminal 1 to the desired industrial equipment 4i (i =
When instructing the operation of a, b, c), the controller 3 receives this operation signal from the portable terminal 1 via the access point 2i (i = a, b) (S1).

Then, the controller 3 sends a signal for measuring the response time between the portable terminal 1 and the controller 3 to the portable terminal 1 via the two access points 2a and 2b (S2).

As a result, the controller 3 measures the respective response times (S3, S4), and identifies the operation place of the portable terminal 1 from the response times and the positions of the access points 2a and 2b (S5, S6).

Therefore, the portable terminal 1 is constructed using two routes.
By measuring the response time between the controller and the controller 3,
The operation place of the portable terminal 1 can be specified.

Next, operable information is acquired based on the positional information of the specified operating place (S7), and it is judged from this operable information whether the industrial equipment 4i to be operated is operable. Yes (S8).

If it is determined that the operation is possible, a message for confirming the operation is sent to the portable terminal 1 (S
9), operate the instructed industrial equipment 4i (S10). On the other hand, when the operation is not possible, a message indicating that the operation is not possible is transmitted to the portable terminal 1 (S11), and the instructed industrial device 4i is not operated (S12).

Therefore, according to the above-described embodiment, since the operation can be performed from the visible position, the operator can prevent the unintentional operation of the industrial equipment. Further, when the operation target device is not within the visible range from the operation place by the notification function, the operator can immediately move to the vicinity of the device which is the visible range and give the next operation instruction.

In this embodiment, although there are a plurality of industrial equipments installed in the plant, the number of industrial equipments may be one.

[0030]

As described above, according to the present invention,
Since the positional relationship between the operation location and the operation target device can be grasped, it is possible to prevent unintended operation of unintended industrial equipment.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic configuration diagram of a device operation system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a positional relationship between an industrial device, an obstacle and an access point of the device operation system according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating a method of identifying an operation place of the device operation system according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating an operable range from an operation place 5a.

FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrating an operable range from an operation place 5b.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart for a controller to specify an operation place in the device operation system according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart for determining whether or not the controller can be operated in the device operation system according to the embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 Portable terminal 2a, 2b access point 3 controller 4a, 4b, 4c Industrial equipment 5a, 5b Operation place 6 hour distance conversion database 7 Location information database 8 Operable information database 9 obstacles

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A device operating system comprising: a mobile terminal for making an operation request to a device; and a control means for controlling a device whose installation position is specified in advance according to the operation request from the mobile terminal, A device operation system comprising: a position detection unit that detects a position of a terminal; and a device identification unit that is provided in the control unit and that identifies a controllable device from the detected position of the mobile terminal. 2. The position detecting means installs relay devices for communication between the mobile terminal and the control means at two different preset locations, and the mobile terminal and the control device via the relay device. The device operation system according to claim 1, wherein the position of the mobile terminal is detected based on a difference in response time between the means. 3. The device identifying means identifies a controllable device using operable information that stores whether or not the operation of the device requested to be operated with respect to the position of the portable terminal is stored. The device operation system according to claim 1. 4. The device operation system according to claim 3, wherein the device identification means transmits information on whether or not the operation is possible to the portable terminal.