Using Android in Industrial Automation.
A story of success.

What is “Using Android in Industrial Automation”?

Using Android in Industrial Automation is a bachelor's thesis at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland written by Manuel Di Cerbo and Andreas Rudolf. As the name implies, it's main goal was to evaluate the usability of the open source operating system Android in applications that go beyond mobile phones, such as Industrial Automation.

For this purpose, the students have decided to develop a complete digital oscilloscope from scratch. This task includes designing and building a custom hardware front-end to acquire analogue voltage signals. On the other hand, a custom Android software platform has to be set up, in order to interact with the hardware front-end and to visualize the acquired signals to the user.

What are the results?

With the achieved fully functional oscilloscope application, we have proven that Android is indeed a major candidate for Industrial Automation. The Android operating system runs on an embedded platform, the so called Beagleboard. Voltage signals are tapped by the custom hardware front-end and are then transferred via USB to finally visualize the acquired data on an external screen. Have a look at the following pictures to gain a basic overview.

Simplified Concept User interface screenshot Custom hardware front-end

Furthermore, Using Android in Industrial Automation has been awarded with the Siemens Excellence Award and was nominated as the best technical bachelor's thesis 2010 at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW).

Where can I find more information?