MINIMIZING HUMAN

INVOLVEMENT IN
INDUSTRIAL AREAS
11.11.2021
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SYED TAIMUR ALI SHAH

Islamabad, Pakistan
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Overview
Growth of industries at an alarming pace such as rubber, pesticides, dye, and metal industries,
has brought along an increase in the production of hazardous waste materials which are a serious
threat to the health and safety of the people working in these industries as well as the
surrounding populations. These industries pose dangers such as harmful radiations, chemical
discharge and toxic gasses. These hazardous materials can also be found in the form of fiber
particles, dust or vapor particles that can catch fire even with a small change in temperature or
atmospheric conditions.
Industries can face adverse conditions as well such as a system breakdown, a potentially
hazardous leak containing lethal fumes or a fire caused by the sudden rise or drop in temperature.
These scenarios are all harmful for human life and are a big health risk. On the other hand these
can cause significant economic and infrastructure damage for any industry. Advancement in
technology has led to an increase in the efficiency and production output of industries. It is also
predicted that automation will lead to the eventual replacement of the human workforce in the
industry in the near future. For the time being industry is mostly controlled by humans in the
control room and in the work areas. No matter how much the technology has evolved in industry,
ultimately it is controlled by humans. This overarching human involvement in the control of
industrial processes has led to many disasters in the recent past, most high profile being
Chernobyl and Fukushima, and to a lesser extent, the Baldia factory incident in Karachi.
With all these potential deadly scenarios, a solution is required which minimizes human
involvement in industrial areas. The near perfect solution can only be found when the problem is
understood and identified perfectly. Thus it is the foremost priority that the problem should first
be investigated thoroughly and then preventive measures should be implemented. By putting this
matter under scrutiny an alternative can be found without risking the health of workers in the
industry and reducing the risk of losses incurred due to human error in an industrial setup.
The question that is of paramount importance is how to minimize overall human involvement in
industrial processes and their control? Keeping all this in view, I will conduct research through
which I will try to come up with a solution which can drastically decrease human involvement in
key areas of industry such as surveillance, fault detection, maintenance and repairs. Safety of
human life and reduction in the probability of human error have been the major factors behind
me coming up with this research proposal.
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Goals
1. My research will try to nullify all the dangerous chores that workers in the industry have
to do on a daily basis for industries to run smoothly. These dangerous chores spread over
a wide range from surveying potentially dangerous areas of the industry to identifying the
vulnerable areas for maintenance and repair. I have devised a plan to eliminate the impact
of these hazards on the health of the workers. The danger to the safety and well-being of
human life in an industrial setup can be mitigated by the correct mix of robotics.
automation and human over watch. The objective of my research is to come up with an
alternative so that a machine can carry out all these hazardous chores instead of actual
human workers, which can be remotely monitored by a factory operator, if required, thus
reducing the risk to the operator’s life.
2. The solution I have in mind is an autonomous rover which can carry out surveillance as
well as maintenance and repairs.
3. Human involvement should only be required when the potential hazardous section of the
industrial area has been repaired by the autonomous rover. This involvement should only
be limited to checking the repaired area and determining if further repairs are needed.
4. Looking for a possibility in which human involvement is nullified in an industrial
environment. This will be the last and the most intensive phase of the research.

Specifications
● The rover will be programmed using Beckhoff Twin CAT 3.0 software which helps in
converting any computer into a real-time controller with a multi programming logic
control (PLC) system, a programming environment and an operating station. The
programming language that I will be using is structured text language as it is closely
related to high level languages such as C and C++. Structured text language consists of a
set of predetermined instructions which can be executed when required. Structured Text
is the best solution for highly complex PLCs. Structured Text makes a complex program
more structured by allowing us to add comments with every step and to give line spacing
when we want to differentiate between different components of the program. Structured
text will allow me to code the different sections of the rover such as the movement,
sensing, feedback and the movement of the maintenance arms of the rover into smaller
blocks. These blocks are called programming organization units (POUs) and they will
help in the reduction of the complexity of the rover program. These POUs will also help
me to program different segments of the rover separately without having to follow a
particular order. Hence if I face delays in programming one segment of the rover, I can
quickly switch over to another segment, thus avoiding wastage of time.
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I will be using MATLAB and Simulink for the virtual model of the rover in the work
studio. By using Twin CAT I will be able to modify the Simulink model whenever a need
arises to do so.
The use of Structured Text language within the Twin CAT system will help me with the
following steps:
a. Constructing the structure of the software
b. Implementation of the concept of software
c. Instantiation of the elements of the program
d. Allocation of function block instances to an interface instance
e. Use of a function block instance via an interface instance
f. Consolidation of sub modules to subsystems of the rover
● The rover will be equipped with different sensors and instruments. These will be as
follows
a) A tunable diode laser. Tunable Diode Laser Absorption Spectroscopy (TDLAS)
will be employed to detect leaks in the pipes. The TDLAS system will help me in
measuring the gas concentration in an industrial area as it can achieve very low
detection limits. The TDLAS setup will consist of a tunable diode laser light
source, transmitting optics, optically accessible absorbing medium, receiving
optics and a detector.
b) To measure the presence of volatile chemicals in the industrial environment, I will
be using quartz crystal microbalance technique. I have chosen this technique
because this sensor is sturdy and consumes very little power while it is also easy
to construct. This sensor uses a quartz crystal as a delicate balance to weigh the
odor molecules.
c) For detection and avoidance of obstacles during the movement of the rover, I will
be using bump sensors on the front and back end of the rover. This will achieve
the goal of obstacle detection and avoidance when the rover is moving forward or
backwards..
d) The Rover will also have a robotic arm with five degrees of freedom for carrying
out maintenance. The arm will consist of five links driven by stepper motors. The
arm will have waist rotation, shoulder rotation, elbow rotation, wrist rotation and
gripper rotation.
e) The Rover will also relay video and audio feedback over a wireless network.1
f) The Rover will also be equipped with a mechanism with which specific fixes,
such as using multi-purpose epoxy putty as a permanent fix for holes and cracks
in pipes, can be applied remotely.

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Milestones
1) Hardware System
2) Software System
3) Integration of Hardware and Software Systems
4) Software Simulation Results
5) Comparative Study
6) Theoretical Design
7) Simulator Design

Methodology
Waterfall methodology will be employed to carry out this research in a sequential manner. This
approach will help in carrying out all the stages of the research, from conception to
implementation, in a structured and organized manner. Adequate allocation of time for every
phase of the research will also be made possible by employing this methodology.

References
1. Aneiba, A. and Hormos, K., 2014. A Model for Remote Controlled Mobile Robotic over Wi-Fi
Network Using Arduino Technology. IET Seminar Digest,.
2. Hussain, S., Hasan, R., Mahmood, S. and Hussain, S., 2020. Design of Wireless Robotic System for
Rescue Operation in Hazardous Environments. International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and
Robotics Research, pp.299-304.
3. R. A. Russell, D. Thiel, R. Deveza and A. Mackay-Sim, "A robotic system to locate hazardous
chemical leaks," Proceedings of 1995 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation,
Nagoya, Japan, 1995, pp. 556-561 vol.1.
4. Z. Zhang, "The Internet remote robot with Skype webcam," 2012 International Conference on
System Science and Engineering (ICSSE), Dalian, Liaoning, 2012, pp. 117-119.
5. Soldan, S., Bonow, G. and Kroll, A., 2012. RoboGasInspector - A Mobile Robotic System for Remote
Leak Sensing and Localization in Large Industrial Environments: Overview and First Results. IFAC
Proceedings Volumes, 45(8), pp.33-38.
6. Raghavan, S., M, J., Saman K, A., Thomas, J., E S, F. and Cheerotha, L., 2015. Hazardous Gas & Mine
Detecting Robot. International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology, 28(1), pp.5-7.
7. El-Sherbiny, A., Elhosseini, M. and Haikal, A., 2018. A comparative study of soft computing
methods to solve inverse kinematics problem. Ain Shams Engineering Journal, 9(4), pp.2535-2548.
8. J. Campbell, F., 2019. Human Factors: The Impact on Industry and the Environment. Natural
Resources Management and Biological Sciences [Working Title],.
9. Qu, Z., Werhahn, O. and Ebert, V., 2018. Thermal Boundary Layer Effects on Line-of-Sight Tunable
Diode Laser Absorption Spectroscopy (TDLAS) Gas Concentration Measurements. Applied
Spectroscopy, 72(6), pp.853-862.