FTsim: A 3D Tool for Teaching Automation Concepts

To improve efficiency and reduce costs, industry rapidly adopts the concepts promoted by Industry 4.0 paradigm. For the future engineers it is important to meet these concepts already during their study. To better prepare them for their careers, we have included some of the new concepts in the Process automation course. With a small group of students, we have developed a 3D visualization and simulation tool, which other students can use instead of real devices. The presented 3D simulator FTsim is built using Unity 3D game engine and mimics the behaviour of three Fischertechnik training models. The simulator succeeds to imitate the physical devices to sufficient detail and allows students to heavily reduce the time spent with a physical teaching platform, yet still devise robust applications. We have experienced very positive feedback from the students, including bug reports and improvement requests. The simulator is based on freely available tools and can be easily expanded to bigger models, other teaching platforms, or even to industrial set-ups.