Measurement and Control Systems

Evolving Measurement and Control Systems
MORI Kinya

Trends in Measurement and Control System Equipment
KUSAKABE Hiroyuki / TAKAYANAGI Yoichi / OKANIWA Fumihiko
Measurement and control systems have been widely used in various fields including industrial, public, and facility systems.
Toshiba has been making substantial progress in measurement and control system equipment applying state-of-the-art technologies since the introduction of the TOSDIC_TM distributed digital control system in 1975. To respond appropriately to market needs, we are continuously developing technologies for industrial controllers, industrial computers, field equipment such as electromagnetic flowmeters and rolling measurement equipment.

New Technologies for and Standardization of Industrial Controllers
KAJIHARA Shigeru / HIROMAE Kozo / ONO Masahide
Industrial controllers are used for manufacturing facilities and ecological equipment in various fields including general industry, social infrastructure, and electric power systems. With the aim of realizing safe, environmentally conscious, and labor-saving systems, demand has recently become stronger for more sophisticated industrial controllers that not only effectively utilize existing technologies but also incorporate advanced technologies.
To meet these requirements, Toshiba has developed the nv series unified controller. The nv series offers improved functionality and performance due to the application of new technologies, including those for ensuring reliability, standardized transmission, and so on.

Concept and New Development of Toshiba Industrial Computers
AZUMA Takao / IZAKI Kosuke / TAKAYANAGI Yoichi
With the rapid progress of computer performance in recent years, industrial computers have come into widespread use in various applications including not only supervisory and control systems but also social infrastructure systems such as broadcasting and communication systems, as well as various other fields in which industrial computers similar to general-purpose computers were not in practical use. With this as a background, industrial computers are required to provide continuity with long-term supply and upward compatibility in addition to high reliability, high environmental adaptability, and ease of maintenance.
To meet these requirements, Toshiba has been developing and providing a broad range of products based upon the latest central processing unit (CPU) technologies and our original high-reliability design.

Latest Field Measurement Technology Meeting Global Market Requirements
YONEMOTO Satoshi / IIJIMA Takuya / NAKAMURA Takaki
Intelligent field devices for sensing various processes of plants including water supply and sewerage systems and general industries such as iron and steel, paper manufacturing, chemicals, and so on are required to have high accuracy, high reliability, and high robustness against the installation environment.
To meet such global market requirements, Toshiba has developed the LF650/LF620 type electromagnetic flowmeter. The LF650/LF620 is designed to measure a wide variety of fluids and to operate under low-temperature conditions. In addition, it satisfies the global need for installation of process piping in a small area and reduction of construction costs due to a decrease in the length of the upstream straight pipe of the flowmeter, through the use of our unique functional magnetic field distribution technology.

Latest Measurement and Inspection Systems for Steel Rolling Lines
HAYASHI Takeshi / WATANABE Keisuke
Rolling measurement systems are widely used in the field for various manufacturing processes ranging from the hot rolling process to surface processing, for the measurement of thickness, width, and shape as well as the inspection of defects.
Toshiba has been developing measuring and inspection technologies for steel rolling lines, and expanding its lineup of equipment according to a wide variety of applications. For measuring the thickness of steel sheets, we are employing a method for detection of the attenuation of ionizing radiation by measuring materials. For other measurements such as width, top and tail shape, surface and inner defects, and thickness of very thick materials and nonmetal materials, optical or magnetic sensing technologies are used.

Field Test and Verification of Operational Support System for Urban Drainage at Pumping Station in Taipei
HIRAYAMA Kotaro / KATAYAMA Kyosuke / NIIYAMA Masanaga
The risk of urban flooding is increasing throughout the world. To prevent urban flooding caused by heavy rainfall, there is a strong need for the development of efficient urban drainage technologies.
Toshiba has been developing various systems and technologies in the field of supervisory control and operational support systems for drainage pumping facilities based on its accumulated measurement and control system technologies. In cooperation with CECI Engineering Consultants, Inc., we have performed joint research for an operational support system for drainage pumps at a pumping station in Taipei. Through field tests, we confirmed that the operational support system for drainage pumps is effective in controlling the rise of water level associated with flood risk, and that fuzzy control is equivalent to manual control by experienced operators.

Latest Replacement of Distributed Control Systems Utilizing nv Series Unified Controller
KOIKE Tatsuro / SUGIMORI Hisayoshi / KOBAYASHI Eiji
A large number of distributed control systems (DCS) in the general industrial market have been operating for almost 30 years, and there is an increasing need for their replacement. Not only renewal of the human-machine interface (HMI) but also the replacement of control stations is required.
The Toshiba Group has developed an efficient replacement method utilizing the latest control system based on the nv series unified controller in addition to the technological assets of the existing system, and applied it to the DCS of a large-scale petrochemical plant. As a result, the newly developed method has achieved enhanced functional capability with further extensibility compared with the conventional method.

Control Systems for Steel and Pulp and Paper Industrial Fields
SAKAMOTO Tadashi / KOBAYASHI Takashi / TSUMAGARI Takashi
Facilities in the steel and pulp and paper industries are required to efficiently produce high-quality products. Highly advanced control systems are becoming essential in these industries for rapid processing of vast amounts of information, high-speed response control, improvement of function and performance, easy maintenance, and reduction of life-cycle costs.
The Toshiba group has developed the New TMACS_TM control system applying both the nv series unified controller and the TC-net_TM I/O Loop fieldbus in addition to the conventional TMACS_TM system, and started to supply it to steel mills and pulp and paper mills.

Regular Feature Detection Function for Fast Identification of Regularly Broadcast Segments in TV Programs
OHMORI Yoshihiro
Automatic indexing techniques for videos have become a focus of attention in recent years due to their usefulness in searching for desired scenes in large volumes of accumulated TV programs, and indexing functions such as repetitious scene detection and climax detection have already been released. However, these functions are unable to adequately detect regular features such as a sports segment in a news program because the analysis of multiple recorded programs is required.
Toshiba has developed a regular feature detection function for TV programs that can search for video and audio fragments commonly contained in multiple programs. The search algorithm of this function is capable of fast operation using a small amount of memory of about 16 Kbytes, and is suitable for audiovisual PCs and embedded systems. This function provides a new style of viewing such as jumping among regular features in different days' broadcasts.

Deployment of Quantitative Project Management in Toshiba Group
MORIYA Tetsuro / YAMADA Atsushi / ISHIKAWA Takashi
To implement organized activities aimed at achieving quantitative improvements in product quality and productivity, quantitative project management (QPM) has become essential for the development of software.
With this as a background, Toshiba is promoting four measures to disseminate QPM to the sections of its group: (1) provision of training, (2) information sharing through events, (3) establishment of guidelines for transfer of know-how, and (4) integration of CMMI^® (Capability Maturity Model Integration) and the Six Sigma business management strategy. As a result of these measures, the number of sections in the Toshiba Group performing QPM with a high level of maturity is increasing every year.

TransferJet^TM Near-Field Wireless Communication Technology for Transfer of Large-Volume Data
KUMAKI Yoshinari
TransferJet^TM is a newly developed near-field wireless communication technology that enables both easy connection and high-speed data transfer among various digital devices such as cellular phones, digital cameras, notebook PCs, printers, TV sets, DVD recorders, and so on, simply by touching one device to another.
Toshiba has been developing prototype products that use TransferJet^TM, and demonstrated these products including a PC, cellular phone, and TV set at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2009 (CES 2009). We are participating in the TransferJet^TM Consortium established by a group of international companies, and are actively promoting the standardization of TransferJet^TM.

ENE · FARM Residential Fuel Cell System Contributing to Global Warming Prevention
NAKAJIMA Ryo / OGAWA Masahiro / MIYAHARA Hideo
Residential fuel cell systems are a promising means of reducing carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions due to their high efficiency. A total of 748 residential fuel cell systems have been installed in individual houses throughout Japan as part of a national project for implementation of a large-scale field demonstration test from FY2005 to 2008. The performance and reliability of the systems are being improved every year, with reductions in production costs concurrently being promoted.
A new 1 kW-class residential fuel cell cogeneration system called ENE·FARM has now been released in the domestic market. This system uses city gas or liquefied petroleum gas as a fuel, and can supply electricity and hot water to a house with high efficiency. In addition, it incorporates a learning-control program that allows the energy-saving rate to be maximized for each house, and has a low-noise, compact, and lightweight design that takes easy installation and maintenance into consideration.

Advanced Integrated Support System for Protective Relay Setting
BAN Koji / ICHIKAWA Tadashi / FUJII Jun
With the recent progress of large and complex power systems due to the enhancement of power systems and the introduction of dispersed power sources on a large scale, protective relay system technology for detecting accidents occurring in power systems and stabilizing them in the event of such accidents has become increasingly important. However, a wide variety of complex and labor-intensive calculations and coordination studies are required in order to set a protective relay.
To realize not only efficient setting of protective relays but also improved operations, Tohoku Electric Power Co., Inc. and Toshiba have developed an advanced integrated support system for protective relay setting in which the software for the primary power systems runs in the Windows^® environment on general-purpose PCs instead of the conventionally required engineering workstations.

Development and Commercialization of 66 kV to 275 kV Polymer Type Transmission Line Arresters
SAIDA Toshiyuki / KOMATSU Katsuaki / ANJIKI Tomikazu
With the recent progress of the information society, transmission line arresters have come to play an important role in improving the reliability of power transmission systems by reducing not only lightning damage to transmission line equipment but also slight power interruptions or voltage drops caused by lightning.
Toshiba has developed and commercialized new compact and lightweight polymer type transmission line arresters for 66 kV to 275 kV systems. These line arresters employ high-voltage zinc oxide (ZnO) elements, which have been widely used for distribution arresters and gas-insulated metal-enclosed switchgear arresters.

Radio Source Visualizing System for Wireless LAN Systems
NOZAWA Tatsuya / SHIMOMAKI Hirokazu
With the rapid dissemination of wireless communication systems such as cellular phones, wireless LAN systems, and so on, e-mail and Web browsers have come into widespread use in various situations. However, radio interference or crosstalk among communication devices has become a major problem due to congestion of radio wave spectrums. To realize secure communications, a system that indicates the locations of conflicting sources of radio emissions at an early stage of building a communications infrastructure is required.
In response to this situation, Toshiba has developed a mobile radio source visualizing system for wireless LAN systems that visually pinpoints suspected sources of radio wave emissions in the frequency range from 2.4 to 2.5 GHz used for wireless LAN systems. Experiments on monitoring of radio emissions and reflected waves from other equipment confirmed that this system achieves successful performance and offers an effective countermeasure against such radio sources.

9 GHz-Band Solid-State Multiparameter Radar for Observation of Local Torrential Downpours and Wind Gusts
MIZUTANI Fumihiko / WADA Masakazu / HIRAI Kenichi
With the recent increase in disasters caused by anomalous weather events including local torrential downpours and wind gusts, weather radars have become essential for precipitation forecasts because they permit direct observation of the interior of rapidly growing cumulonimbus clouds. Small and lightweight weather radars allowing easy transportation and installation are therefore required for radar observations at the point of origin of torrential downpours.
Toshiba has developed a 9 GHz-band solid-state multiparameter (MP) weather radar that achieves high-precision observation while complying with the regulations for suppression of spurious emissions. This MP radar features smaller size, lighter weight, and reduced life-cycle cost, and incorporates the latest technologies including MP observation data processing and solid-state radar technologies. We are making efforts to supply the MP radar as a social infrastructure for more dependable rainstorm observation and forecasting services.