Human Machine Interface – What is it?
Pregled
Technology has been reaching its pinnacle day by day. With the series of advancement in every field, industrial automation has taken a new name with Human Machine Interface. Generally, speaking a human interface system connects an operator or to the controller of an industrial system i.e. the machine. These can be simple like a single touch display mounted on machine or a technologically advanced one with multiple touches. These also include our mobile technologies like smartphones or smart watches as well. Human machine interfaces have been used in various fields like electronics, defence, medical etc. For a HMI, any mode of communication could be used like vision, sound or body temperature.
Why it is consistently gaining importance in the industries?
The most important consideration for the rise of human machine interface is the ease of use it creates on the product. When the user gets used to and feels comfortable with its presence, the HMI is a hit in itself. Apart from that it imbibes a sense of reliability, easy accessibility making the functionality a simple and effective one itself. The overall success or failure of product depends on the user and his feedback over his use of the interface. A good HMI should always look at the comfort of user and should be aware about the functional requirements of a user. When you are the one developing a HMI for the user, listening to their requirements is the foremost one. It might be possible that the user is comfortable with either keyboard, mouse or through visual or speech recognition technology. Since the centre of this entire conversation relies on customer or user, who has shown a positive feedback with the HMI, its importance grows considerably.
The various fabulous features of HMI
- Tag –Level security: This means that a HMI should have Read or write security and allows a user to enter the system with proper credentials only. But, this is not the case with every interface and lacks the security at asset level. If the HMI contains a tag level security it will block any unauthorized access to enter the restricted portion.
- Amalgam of security models: The modern HMI should be viable to manage the multiple ways in which the user could be identified and authorized wherein the application or data servers remain centralized. The interface should have Active Directory and Windows Authentication, WS-Federation and Application Internal Security.
- Perfect Designing: The modern HMI should create an aesthetic essence, intuitive nature with an ergonomic structure to meet the high demands of international markets. Along with a good design, functionality should also be considered that should entice reliability among users.
- Multi-styled connections: HMI used today should come equipped with variety of terminals like screw terminals, plug-in terminals, push-in terminal, soldered terminal so that it is ready to be connected and worked in one go.
- Lower training cost: A better interface means lower cost utilized in training. It also means that even if you have less skilled manpower, you may get the same amount of productivity, resulting in lesser errors and losses.
Check out some of the benefits of Human Machine Interface that have revolutionized the industry.
- Higher productivity: Industries have seen tremendous productivity with in their applications by incorporating HMI to their operations. This has resulted in producing more work in lesser time.
- Employee satisfaction: HMIs have made the task of workers much easier than they were before. Like the users feel that touch screen monitors are much easier to use than the standard monitors. This creates a more direct effect on productivity as well.
- Internet of Things: Internet of Things is basically the collection of devices that are related to internet to one way or other. HMIs are definitely those devices that are connected to internet and with this is the advent of a world with whole new possibilities that can raise the level of productivity of the industrial world to an exponential one like network monitoring etc.
- Alerts: HMI can provide the user with an immediate alarm that will help him in locating about any malfunction or problem that requires troubleshooting.
- Improved Communication: With the facility of Ethernet, remote I/O, serial port and other methods, users experience an improved connectivity which will facilitate higher productivity.
Applications of Human Machine Interface
Since the interface has proved its reliability to an extent many industries utilize the functionality of HMI in
- Industrial Automation HMI Display
- Medical Heart Monitoring
- LED Indicators and Mechanical Switches
- Capacitive Touch technology
- Advance Driver Assist System
- Hardware Security products
- Industrial control Panel
- Video processing HMI display
- Graphic Rendering
- Display Driving
All these applications prove that HMI has a bright future and will always be in demand by the user due to its ability to ease operations and a mechanical robustness which is not found in others.
Zaključek
Human-machine interface is widely spread across different industries and domains. It has become a part of our daily life. Whenever we go and whatever we do, there is a presence of HMI. In the coming days, it will do more activities and much more efficient. We need to wait and watch for the new directions in HMI.
