Training System for the Tomato Paste Production Process Through Virtual Environments

This paper presents the virtualization and control of a tomato paste manufacturing plant (double effect evaporator). The virtual environment was developed through CAD and Unity 3D programs, with the purpose of simulating the real behavior of the process. A control algorithm based on the inverse of the process is proposed to control the process. Control algorithm is implemented in Matlab software, which communicates with the virtual environment through the use of shared memories. The virtual environment sends the value of the process variables and receives the value of the control actions from the software where the control law is established. The virtual simulator allows simulating the robustness of the controller to different disturbances, e.g., sensor measurement error, input error and modeling error, without compromising the safety of the real plant and the operator. As a result, an immersed and interactive virtual environment was obtained that represents the real behavior of the closed-loop process and with a user-friendly interface allowing to observe the evolution in real time of the plant together with the implemented controller.