GBE > Encyclopaedia > Files > Lectures >  G#13237

Control Systems Lecture

Control Systems Lecture
About:

---

Control Systems

Control systems are reliant upon:

• Human interaction (flick a switch, control a smart phone, computer programme or pre-programmed instruction)
• Automatic monitoring, detection and actuation (person in corridor detected and light instructed to turn on)

 

Internet of Things

• More than wi-fi capable printing
• Appliances equipped with chip and wi-fi capability
• Controllable by smart-phone app or via internet
• Permits remote control within or without the building
• Turn the heating on before you arrive so the temperature is comfortable just as you arrive
• Allows appliances to react with each other washing machine triggered by the radio reporting low tariff power

 

In the home:

• New upmarket houses pre-wired with ITC services
• Home entertainment (Hi-fi, TV, music, video, cinema)
• Home security (CCVT, central locking, detection, alarm)
• Computer system, server, outlets in all rooms and wi-fi
• Central server and delivery to any/many room(s) at the same time
• Presence detection (crush pin detected) and delivery to your location as you move

 

What else should be possible:

• Check local bus service arrival times to allow choosing the bus over the car

 

Voice actuation

Integer House BRE Campus Bathroom Controls

• Voice actuated taps that are controlled by computer
• It recognizes your voice and runs the bath to the temperature and depth you prefer.

 

Lifts in Bryan Avery 9 storey house

• Linear induction motor lift
• Voice activated lift cab
• Call the lift and it arrived as you do
• Tell it which floor you require and it goes there
• Recognizes your voice and accelerates and travels at your preferred speed

 

Travel to Work:

Motorways (M25 west)

Overhead gantry with variable speed for added capacity, with controls and variable message signs

 

Entering a town

Car park capacity variable message signs

Variable Message Signs indicating spaces in various car parks to redirect to avoid queues

 

Traffic lights

Cameras monitor approaching vehicles and start light signal cycle to clear traffic,

Absence of vehicles can leapfrog steps of the sequence

Some cameras are not sensitive enough or cars are out of sight and reversion or waving can wake them up

 

Shopping centre multi-storey car park

Has 1000 lights on all night after the car park is shut

Planned improvements

Now want to add red and green lights to indicate car parking bay availability

Now another 2000 lights to be added

Red lights if occupied and green light if vacant

1000 green lights ad 1000 white lights left on all night when car park empty

 

Consolidation Centre lorry loading dock lights

Green lights to show a vacant dock but the absence of a lorry says that already

Green light could be turned on invite the lorry to the specific dock, but they are all on all the time the dock is empty

Red lights to show an occupied dock but the presence of a lorry says that already

Green light could turn to red once the lorry is engaged to tell the driver to turn off engine and hand break on.

Red light could be turned off when there is no action occurring.

 

The power of open access big data

Underground, Oystercard and London 2012

When the Olympics came along there was a real risk of over crowding due to domestic and international visitors to the games and to the city using the same system that delivers the workers and the difficulties could have arisen.

The Underground had for a long time been modeled for train movement optimization but without

But passengers could not be modeled due to unknown and unpredictable movement of any individual

Then along came the Oystercard, in advance of the Olympics and everything changed

Every individual oyster card represents an individual person

Monitoring transactions of the Oystercard discovers the timing(s) and route(s) of the individual

Looking at many Oystercard transactions discovers the timing(s) and route(s) of London’s working population

The majority (a very significant %) of which have a regular pattern of movement on the network

Every day they arrive at a terminal station enter the underground, use the same route to work and retrace their track in the evening.

Occasionally they may do something different but the majority of the time it is predictable.

Now modeling of the majority passengers in the underground is also possible.

So optimization of train journey to better match predictable passenger flow quantities and times

Now, linking the Olympics ticket sales to Oystercard ticket sales means the regular underground users that purchase games tickets can be remodeled, deleting their work route and adding their games route, their modified journeys can be now be modeled in the system.

International visitors entering the underground system near their hotels can also be linked to games tickets and journeys planned.

Now the whole system and the slugs of people can be modeled and pushed round the system, bottlenecks identified and more frequent trains can be directed to clear them.

If you travelled on the underground during the games you may have experienced the lack of problems.

 

Underground Tunnel layouts and passages between

Signage directs you the longest route to spread the passengers out slow them down to reduce congestion and bottlenecks

 

Door actuation

Proximity detection

Infrared detectors are aware of approaching pedestrians and instruct the door ironmongery to open the door in time for the pedestrian to enter without slowing or speeding up.

The same will happen at the inner doors of the same lobby.

The speed of the pedestrian will bring them to the inner lobby doors and open them whilst the outer doors have not yet closed, destroying the purpose of the doubled lobbied door and letting the wind howl in.

 

Touch detection

The British Library reading rooms have door ironmongery of bronze handles with leather bindings one set has a copper thread running parallel with the leather bindings.

When a visit or librarian holds the door handle they complete an electrical circuit that triggers the door actuator to open the door

 

Foot Traffic Detection

Trains internal vestibule doors

Footfall adjacent to the doors will trigger the doors to open

Continuous weight on the floor should stop the door closing but somebody saved a bit of money or forgot this.

 

Lifts banks in Towerblocks

Canary Wharf Towers

10,000 occupants plus visitors, 50 storeys, 2600 m2/floor, ±200 people/floor, 32 passenger lifts, 40 seconds ground floor to roof level

Lifts know where to go once you have told them which floors you want (see: Voice actuation later)

If a lift with say 20 passengers stops at any floor anywhere in 50 storeys then the service would be slow and cause bottle necks

There are 4 lift banks clustered around the core potentially serving each corner of the building

Each lift bank has 4 lifts facing 4 more, (32 in all, plus fireman and goods lifts) these lifts go fast to the first of a range of floors avoiding floors below then serves its range of floors as buttons are pressed by passengers

This reduce the numbers of stops and increase speed of delivery of those passengers

Passengers are directed to the correct lift bank by signage in the lobby and their journey is swift.

Passengers having pressed the call button are attracted to arrived lifts by bells as normal.

 

Temperature Controls

Office Campus Greenpark Reading

Designed by Norman Foster has a visitors centre where RIBA SE holds CPD.

The Facilities Manager has a member of staff full-time taking phone calls from staff asking for different room temperatures, they log the call and adjust the temperature using M&E controls to adjust the air temperature.

This goes on all day, no doubt the 10th call undoes the work of the 1^st call and the cycle begins again.

 

Inland Revenue Office Nottingham

Designed by Hopkins

The facilities manager explained that staff are given a hand-held infrared controller to adjust the air temperature in their vicinity, raising or lower in their desired temperature.

If every member of staff has a different preferred temperature, (males and female staff have different dress codes and different body temperature needs) then conflicting IR messages will clash and probably ovehwhelm the system with confusing instruction.

Now the staff have a controller that flashes but does nothing to the controls but gives the staff a false impression of having some control

The lightweight top floor roof overheats the top floor occupants and little can be done about it apart from reinsulating the roof with the correct insulation properties for the conditions.

 

Ventilation Control

• Ventilation Control
• BRE Environment Building
• Ventilation shaft on South elevation
• Connected to and ventilates the floor void
• Once the temperature reaches preset level
• Valve at top opens and releases the hot air inside drawing hot air from floor void
• Opaque windows at floor edge act as vents to floor void

 

 

Sunlight Controls

British Library Reading room rooflight solar shading

Readers in reading rooms want daylight without the glare of sunlight, and rare books collections do not want high levels of ultraviolet light entering or they fade the books

Solar shading set on pivots and controlled by actuators mounted on frames above greenhouse rooflights

The blades are controlled by computer to drive actuators that adjust the angle of the solar blades to maximize the daylight entry and minimize the sunlight entry and bounce the light off surfaces so the UV light is absorbed.

Sunlight detection outside and daylight detection inside are brought together by software which also knows the time of day and day of the year, the software has the capacity to learn for every day of the year the optimum position of the solar shading blades and modify this according to the weather, sunshine and clouds.

 

Environment Building BRE Campus

Interger Building BRE Campus

The lean to greenhouse has internal louvered blinds following the line of the sloping glass

There was (and still is?) an internet controller that allow visits to open or close the blinds.

The stupidity of giving controls to anybody to remotely mess up the energy performance of the building is real.

 

Lighting Controls

• Lighting Controls
• Room ownership
• Storage cupboard belongs to nobody
• You enter with hands full
• No hands free to turn lights on
• Exit leaving with more hands full
• No hands to turn off the light
• This needs to be an automatic light

 

Office Floor

• Desk areas nearest the windows do not need lights on in day
  • (daylight sensors or seasonally adjusted clock)
  • but do need light at night
• Lights should go off at lunchtime and end of business
  • And manually turned back on after lunch and by later workers
• Natural England add string pull switches over work spaces
  • Staff who care (all of them) use the string pull always

 

WC

• Stickers say turn off the light as you leave
• But you do not own the space
• And you may not be alone
• The silent sitter will be in darkness if you turn off the lights
• The room should turn its lights off when vacant
• And silent sitters should reactivate it
• Many hands make light work

 

Last person out

• Last person leaving the floor turn on security
  • Turn off lights enter lifts
  • Trained to do it
• Cleaners enter floors and turn them on
  • But not obliged to turn off upon completion
  • Specify it in contracts
• Security enter unlit floors, lights on
  • Time delay 1 hour and turn off
  • Security roster every hour
  • Lights on 24 hours of day

 

Lights on emergency staircase

• Lights in emergency stairs are often on 24 hours of the day
  • Need to be on a clock
  • Off out of office hours
  • PIR detectors turn on if staff present
• External stairs are often on 24 hours a day
  • Need to be on a clock or daylight detectors
  • Should only come on in an emergency in hours of darkness
• Lights on stairs can be on timed switch with delayed off

---

© GBE NGS ASWS BrianSpecMan aka Brian Murphy
17th October 2016

Control Systems Lecture
Images:

---

Cover Slide

Handout Cover

---

© GBE NGS ASWS BrianMurphy
aka BrianSpecMan
17th October 2016

Control Systems Lecture
See also: