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Learning by doing is essential in engineering education, along with topics such as systems automation and control and energy efficiency. This article presents work including all of these different topics. A micro-cogeneration facility located at the University of Vigo is studied. The experimental plant is automated after detecting the most important variables and actuations. A system responsible for the control, supervision, and monitoring of the system was developed using the programming software LabVIEW. All of these processes are explained in depth here. Finally, a complete practice experience is proposed for the next course of the Master of Thermal Engineering programme taught at the University of Vigo. Different tasks are included: the study of the operating principle of a micro-cogeneration system, the analysis of measurement devices and actuators for the automation of an experimental facility, LabVIEW programming, and interaction with the integrated system. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology will be evaluated through a five-point Likert-type scale survey. ß 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 24:723-735, 2016; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary. com/journal/cae;

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Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are spreading their usage in many areas, including last-mile distribution. In this research, a UAV is used for performing light parts delivery to workstation operators within a manufacturing plant, where GPS is no valid solution for indoor positioning. A generic localization solution is designed to provide navigation using RFID received signal strength measures and sonar values. A system on chip computer is onboarded with two missions: first, compute positioning and provide communication with backend software; second, provide an artificial vision system that cooperates with UAV’s navigation to perform landing procedures. An Industrial Internet of Things solution is defined for workstations to allow wireless mesh communication between the logistics vehicle and the backend software. Design is corroborated through experiments that validate planned solutions.

It is thought that there are 14 million standardised sea containers out of order, equal to 23.3 million twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU), which could be devoted for other purposes. The COR-TEN ® steel containers are the best, due to the features of the materials, to be used in applications intended for the accommodation of people. One of the uses is framed in the area of humanitarian help, as service modules in areas of social emergency. Moreover, the deployment of these kinds of modules is quite simple, as the Army is generally able to transport containers in its units. In this project we have selected three typologies of service modules and we have designed modules based on sea containers which can fit into these typologies. The container chosen to be recycled is the 1 TEU, to which the closings and divisions are defined, which must reflect the different typologies of the service modules chosen. Afterwards, a study of thermal charges is carried out on three different settings of service modules located in five locations spread in different climate areas. Throughout a thermal simulation in Trnsys ® (V17, Thermal Energy System Specialists, LLC, Madison, WI, USA), the consumption and maximum demand of heat and cold are analysed. Based on these results, the best equipment to cover the energy demand of the modules analysed in this study could be chosen. Moreover, the results can be used to estimate the operational costs of the deployment of the modules.