MASSIME Project

New mechatronics safety systems (cabled and wireless) for railway, aerospace and robotic applications.

In recent years, competitiveness and sustainability in the world have a considerable impact on two aspects of mechatronic system: management and maintenance. Management stays for capacity to control a total system functionality with high efficiency. Maintenance stays for control of a total system devices state to guarantee the performance level for all working time.

Management and maintenance are inextricably linked to issues concerning safety in systems whose performance may have dangerous effects to humans and the environment.

Safety joins these two phases, instead the timing certainly diverge them. In fact, time required to control actions aimed to the system management is typically very quick, like real-time control; however, for the maintenance, the working time is generally comparable with the system components degradation time and it’s on a scale much different. However, to reply to the global business challenges, it is important to develop research activities focused on innovative systems development to measure the main physical quantities of a mechatronic system (to control it) and on refining experimental and diagnostic techniques, aimed to achieve the following objectives:

·       High speed response tests, to guarantee the device efficiency without affecting the normal working time cycle;

·       Control systems that allow to achieve high real time performances and safety rules observance in applications where humans and machines interact simultaneously;

·       Life “accelerated” testing for mechatronic components, thanks to test systems able to stress the component with a characterized tests model, the sensitive parameters performance is detected;

·       Predictive models diagnostics for test systems self-diagnosis;

·       Supervision, fault detection and timely diagnosis algorithms synthesis;

·       Bad working real-time detection, to ensure timely maintenance operations and to implement appropriate strategies for avoiding downtime.