A Real-time Interface Simulator for Operator Training: A Proposed Architecture

Operator training systems are essential tools for industrial systems, particularly for those where human error has an impact on the safety of materials and personnel and/or may cause significant financial losses. The work presented here is part of a major research project concerned with the study of operator behavior when facing safety-critical situations. The application concerns the supervisory control of an electricity distribution substation. This paper focuses on the first phase of the project; the development of a real-time operator training system that simulates the supervisory control system. The simulator promotes the operator’s immersion into a virtual replica of the real working environment. The simulator’s architecture, based upon a set of formal models interconnected to form the simulation engine, is presented. The models were constructed using the colored Petri nets formalism. The modular architecture allows for remote interaction via the web and offers two interfaces with the plant control system: a virtual reality representation of the human—machine interface and a supervisory system representation. This paper presents and discusses the architecture of the Operator Training Simulator.