I’m using Simulink’s Stateflow as a tool for teaching Faul-Tolerant Systems in the Master of Mechatronics at the University of Málaga.

Using Stateflow for the developmet of Fault Tolerant Systems

One technique for the fault diagnose of systems is based on the modeling of the system as an Finite State Machine (fms), and all the possible trajectories as an special fsm called “diagnoser”. It is based on different methods and used in the classroom as published here.

In this case we are using this tool with surprisingly good results:

• No programming needed (just modelling)
• High level model is created with good implementation separation
• The student starts building successful simple programs since the first moment
• Teachers avoid the hassle of always changing IDE’s, versions, and implementation platforms.
• Thanks to Harel diagrams, Complex systems with high readability can be modeled.
• Teaching time is reduced.
• Laboratory time is focused on the problem. Leaving spare time for proper documentation.

It’s not an open source platform, but definitely I’m going to use this tool extensively.

Thanks to my students.

Please, download and cite this work:

Gomez-de-Gabriel, J.M.; Mandow, A.; Fernandez-Lozano, J.; Garcia-Cerezo, A., “Mobile Robot Lab Project to Introduce Engineering Students to Fault Diagnosis in Mechatronic Systems,” Education, IEEE Transactions on , vol.PP, no.99, pp.1,1
doi: 10.1109/TE.2014.2358551
keywords: {Education;Fault tolerance;Mechatronics;Mobile robots;Navigation;Robot sensing systems;Engineering education;LEGO Mindstorms NXT;LabVIEW;fault detection and diagnosis;higher education;mechatronics;mobile robots;project-based learning},
URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsptp=&arnumber=6914629&isnumber=4358717