Soda Bottling Process Through the Virtual Hardware in the Loop Technique

Currently, the world is going through an unprecedented health crisis, which has caused significant impacts in the teaching–learning area during the confinement stage due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the education system has opted for virtual education through immersive technologies. In this sense, this work presents the development of an industrial process of packaging bottles implemented in the Unity 3D graphics engine. The proposed control scheme considers the hardware in the loop simulation technique, consisting of: (i) process simulation, this stage considers the virtualized process and the mathematical equations that represent the dynamic behavior of the industrial process; the process simulation is implemented in a main computer, and (ii) target hardware, this stage considers the implementation of the advanced control algorithm in low-cost embedded cards. The results obtained allowed the immersion and interaction of the user with the virtual environment, which is part of the hardware in the loop simulation technique. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.