Co-design applied: Design of open hardware based human machine interface

Human Machine Interface (HMI) is considered as the face of the Machine, a bridge connecting the machine to the user. HMI is the only means by which an operator can understand and utilize a device. With the technological advancements happening at an expeditious pace, even a slight change in the functioning of a device calls for a customized user interface to test the same. Adapting the Hardware-Software Co-design approach, this paper discusses and demonstrates a new design of HMI test component based on open source hardware. The purpose of the HMI Test Component is to enable the parallel development of Hardware and Software, it can help in testing the device function even without the availability of the User Interface hardware. Using Arduino as the brain of the system allows us to incorporate numerous features and implement different forms of communication.