Web-based hardware-neutral sequential controller

This research creates a Web-based hardware neutral sequential controller system to assist user on design of the general-purpose sequential controller. The functions of the system include control circuit setup and simulation, physical system control and Web-based remote control. The main objective of these systems is to provide a hardware neutral environmental for integration of different types of data acquisition units from different manufacturing companies. This controller environment allows one to add or remove corresponding modules without further modification of the original control software. This system is written in Java, thus can be either executed as a unique program or embedded in an HTML page. The hardware neutral capability is achieved through the applications of Java dynamic linkage and object reflection. Due to the nature of being a Java program, this system can be used in a Microsoft Windows or Linux system.