Rafael Aracil Santonja

Distance practices in subjects of automatic control

This work aims at suitably combining hands-on and remote practices in the teaching of automatic control subjects. Virtual and Remote Laboratories in Automatic education have increasingly become a method utilized by universities in their efforts to offer greater schedule flexibility and operation of available resources. This paper discusses the implementation of remote experiments for Automatic Control through both the Distance Laboratory System (SLD), developed at the Universidad Central Marta Abreu de Las Villas, and AulaWeb, developed at the ETSI Industriales of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. The SLD allows users (i) to learn and adjust predefined controllers, (ii) to design new controllers, and (iii) to test and analyze the performance of the predefined/designed controllers over a set of physical devices. The SLD uses MATLAB-Simulink for the distance laboratory, i.e. testing the predefined/designed controllers for practice and the Real Time Workshop Toolbox (RTW) as a real time kernel. AulaWeb is used as an aid for students and teachers of academic subjects. AulaWeb has been tested at several engineering schools and has been used by over 2000 students each year. This work shows the results using SLD and AulaWeb in Regulación Automática I of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. The distance and virtual practices, made in SLD, are combined with the question in AulaWeb to form Web self-assessment tools.

Skeletal Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Upper Limb of Human Shoulder under Brachial Plexus Injury

This article presents the skeletal-mathematical model and a measurement system for providing real-time information related to position, angular velocity, and orientation of different movements related to the upper limb of human shoulder using Inertial Measurement Units (IMU). The main goal of this system is to improve the rehabilitation tasks of unilateral brachial plexus injury, therefore a complete kinematic analysis of the shoulder skeletal system, considering only the essential variables to simulate the movements used in rehabilitation, is detailed. Finally, are presented some experimental tests based on joint physiology and biomechanics of human shoulder for children less than 10 years, according to desired restriction of medical staff belong to Hospital Infanta Sofia of Madrid.

Sistema de Laboratorios a Distancia (SLD): laboratorio para la enseñanza del control automático a distancia

En este trabajo es presentado el Sistema de Laboratorios a Distancia (SLD), el cual es un laboratorio a distancia enfocado al estudio del control autom·tico desarrollado en la Universidad Central iMarta Abreui de las Villas. El principal objetivo de este laboratorio es permitir a los usuarios aprender a ajustar controladores predefinidos y a diseOar sus propios controladores para posteriormente probarlos sobre un conjunto de dispositivos fIsicos a travEs de Internet. El SLD utiliza herramientas de diseOo de sistemas de control asistido por computadora como Matlab-Simulink para la creaciUn de nuevos controladores, lo que facilita a los usuarios el uso del sistema. El SLD permite una r·pida y f·cil integraciUn de nuevos procesos para experimentos de control y en la actualidad est·n disponibles tres dispositivos: un motor de corriente directa y un robot manipulador en Cuba asI como un cilindro electro neum·tico en EspaOa.