Abstract:

Industrial automation grows with new technologies, and especially with the arrival of Industry 4.0, which is a clear example. This requires students who are increasingly better trained in automation processes and programmable logic controller (PLC) programming. The training of these students requires simulations of industrial environments not always possible in a teaching center.

The use of virtual environment applications such as Factory.io allows the training of students in a complete and fun way. The students feel immersed in the industrial environment and must program the automatisms so that they respond to the demands.

In order to program the PLCs according to the customer's requirements, it is necessary to structure the processes. For this, GRAFCET has proven to be a highly efficient tool.

In this article we describe the work carried out in the classroom for the teaching of GRAFCET with the use of PLC Siemens S7-1215 and within the virtual Factory.io environment.

The results show that the use of this methodology has improved the student's perception of their own GRAFCET learning.

Keywords:

GRAFCET, virtual reality, learning, experiential.