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Microcontroller-Based Robotics and SCADA Experiments Savaş Şahin and Yalçin İşler, Member, IEEE
Abstract—The recently rapid increase in research and development in automation technology has led to a gap between education and industry. Although developing countries need to keep in touch with the latest developments, that poses some difficulties for industrial automation education, such as cost, lack of student motivation, and insufficient laboratory infrastructure. Low-cost experimental setups may overcome many of these challenges. This paper describes how supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and robotics experiments in control and automation education can be conducted at reasonable cost. These setups consist of a fluid tank, a Cartesian robot with a three-axis robot arm, and serial, parallel, USB, and TCP/IP communication ports. These experiments were developed and used in control and automation education in the Automation Laboratory of Ege Technical and Business College, Ege University, İzmir, Turkey. The presented experiments were also quantitatively evaluated using the one-way ANOVA test on the exam results, and qualitatively evaluated by a discussion session and survey. The results indicated that student performance improved when microcontroller-based experimental setups were used, and that increasing the complexity of experiments also helped improve students’ academic success. Index Terms—Control engineering education, digital control, robots, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems.
I. INTRODUCTION
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ESEARCH and development in control and automation technology for industrial applications has increased rapidly to meet industry’s evolving needs in control and automation systems. The use of such systems is an important indicator of the level of industrialization of developing countries. Control and automation technology laboratories play a vital role in this development and serve as a point of interaction between industry and control education. In developing countries, there are several problems for using control and automation experimental setups and experiments [1]. First, control and automation courses need a significant budget for instrumentation and automation equipment. Second, many commercial automation setups may not gain students’ attention
Manuscript received August 04, 2012; revised November 06, 2012; accepted February 05, 2013. Date of publication March 13, 2013; date of current version October 28, 2013. S. Şahin is with the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Çiğli Campus, İzmir Katip Çelebi University, 35620 İzmir, Turkey (e-mail:
[email protected]). Y. İşler is with the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Çiğli Campus, İzmir Katip Çelebi University, 35620 İzmir, Turkey. Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TE.2013.2248062
over the general run of experiments. Third, real industrial processes cannot be realized in the laboratory. These problems can be locally overcome by using low-cost experimental setups [2]. In previous studies, such laboratories have been established with controllers and instrumentation equipment such as microcontrollers, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), industrial personal computers (PCs), and sensors and actuators [2]–[5]. Microcontrollers that have a defined input–output interface logic to physically connect the devices and a program to access the device functions are widely used for control applications, usually for implementing controllers together with digital and analog input interfaces [3], [6]. In contrast, PLCs are used to directly control real processes with sensors and actuators [4]. Alternatively, industrial PCs are also used to control real processes via input–output ports [7]. In control and automation systems, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) can be defined as a multidisciplinary field, comprising electrical, electronics, instrumentation, mechanical, control, and computer sciences [8]. This is a highly flexible and expandable area, covering real-time data acquisition (DAQ), managing with a human–machine interface (HMI), and interacting with the World Wide Web (WWW), wide area networks (WANs), local area networks (LANs), and PCs [9], [10]. Thus, SCADA courses play an important role in control and automation education at engineering departments in universities and technical colleges [11]–[13]; their syllabi and experiments must be carefully chosen to meet industrial needs. Previous studies have shown that LabVIEW graphical programming language (GPL) can be used as a simulation program that builds some specific curricular and cognitive skills [12] such as analyzing the process, implementing a GPL, and understanding LabVIEW objects and SCADA/HMI (operator’s interface and data-logging) applications [9]. Moreover, LabVIEW virtual instruments (VIs) can reduce the mistakes or accidents, and the need for repair, inherent in using actual instruments and automation equipment [14]. In the work presented here, a different approach is taken: New microcontroller-based experimental setups and experiments were designed for a SCADA Systems course to meet industrial needs at low cost, using Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), graphical user interfaces (GUIs), and universal serial bus (USB) ports. USB ports have recently become essential to establishing communication for robotics and SCADA systems. These experimental setups are general-purpose, well-designed, updated implementations, tailored for seven applications of VI-aided SCADA systems. Although some specific designs have already been presented [2], [5], such a suite of detailed, well-designed experimental setups
0018-9359 © 2013 IEEE
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powered by current industrial applications has yet to be described. The rest of this paper is organized as follows.Section II gives a brief description of the educational integration of the designs into the curriculum. Section III explains the software selected, the hardware designed to go with this software, and the components of the new SCADA experiments. Section IV gives the results achieved of both quantitative and qualitative evaluations. Finally, these results are discussed.
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TABLE I SYLLABUS OF SCADA SYSTEMS
II. EDUCATIONAL INTEGRATION The SCADA course “SCADA Systems” plays a fundamental role in the two-year curriculum of the Control and Automation Program at Ege Technical and Business College (ETBC), Ege University, İzmir, Turkey. The courses leading up to SCADA Systems, which is given in the fourth and last semester of the curriculum, include Basic Electronics, Digital Electronics, Electronic Measurement Techniques and Safety, Computer Aided Circuit Design, Sensor and Transducers, Microcontrollers, Process Measurement I & II, Process Control, Programmable Logic Controllers, and Microcontroller-Based Control; each of these recommends textbooks as supplementary material on their course Web page. Students thus begin the SCADA Systems course with a uniform background knowledge provided by these earlier courses. For example, in Process Control, students are taught the standards of the Instrument Society of America (ISA) such as Instrumentation Symbols and Identification (ISA5.1), Binary Logic Diagrams for Process Operations (ISA-5.2), Graphic Symbols for Distributed Control/Shared Display Instrumentation, Logic and Computer Systems (ISA-5.3), and Instrument Loop Diagrams (ISA-5.4); these standards are necessary to establish communication for SCADA. The learning objectives of the course, updated in 2010, are that students should do the following: 1) understand the fundamental concepts of a SCADA system and its various components such as electronics, computers, and communication systems; 2) be able to configure the SCADA software package program and determine the needs for the SCADA system from given information; 3) learn communication protocols used for computerized system control; 4) be able to install and run real application setups using the software; 5) be able to analyze the overall SCADA system software and the various elements of communication-based hardware. SCADA Systems, given in the fourth semester, is given in one 4-h session per week. Its syllabus is given in Table I. III. EXPERIMENTS Microcontroller-based experimental setups were designed to carry out seven consecutive experiments. The first four of these experiments—on the RS232 serial port, IEEE 1284 D-25 parallel port, the use of a digital thermometer, and temperature and liquid-level instrumentation [15], [16]—were explained in a previous study [2]. Three new experiments—on
using a USB port, controlling a USB-based Cartesian robot, and controlling a TCP/IP-based robot arm—are explained in Sections III-A–III-C. A. Software Selection The choice of control and automation software is very important issue for engineering applications and education. The selection criteria were explained in detail in a recent study [8]. The LabVIEW 8.5 evaluation copy (to use USB and TCP/IP ports) was chosen for SCADA education in the SCADA Systems course because of its minimal cost. B. Experimental Setups The laboratory is equipped with 10 experimental setups, each comprising a PC, an application set, a multimeter, an oscilloscope, and necessary software. The PCs, with a Core2 3300 MHz processor and 2 GB of memory, run MS Windows XP Professional and LabVIEW 8.5 [17] evaluation software. An experimental SCADA system consists of DAQ hardware and development software. DAQ hardware, composed of an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and a digital-to-analog converter (DAC), is used to acquire and control the physical phenomena with sensors and actuators, respectively. VIs in LabVIEW are commonly used in programming SCADA systems for logging data from a DAQ system with a flexible GUI [18]. A peripheral interface circuit (PIC)-based SCADA system is preferred for experiments because PLC-based systems are very expensive to use for education [19]. PIC-based experimental setups serve as the signal conditioner, data acquirer, and controller for interface circuits. Their internal software supports the GUI developed in LabVIEW. In this study, three different PIC microcontroller boards were designed and used in experiments: The PIC16F877, PIC18F4550, and PIC18F452 are used for serial and parallel port-based experimental setups, USB-based experimental setups, and TCP/IP-based experimental setups, respectively. These microcontrollers include internal flash program memory, a large area of RAM, internal EEPROM, and eight channel ADCs. They are thus suitable for real-time systems and monitoring applications [6].
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TABLE II GRADING SCHEME SHOWING THE MARKS AVAILABLE FOR EACH PART OF THE SEVEN EXPERIMENTS: 1—RS232 SERIAL PORT COMMUNICATION; 2—IEEE 1284 PARALLEL PORT COMMUNICATION; 3—DIGITAL THERMOMETER; 4—TEMPERATURE & LIQUID-LEVEL CONTROL; 5—USB PORT COMMUNICATION; 6—USB-BASED CARTESIAN ROBOT; 7—TCP/IP-BASED ROBOT ARM. (“N/A” MEANS THAT ITEM IS NOT PART OF THAT EXPERIMENT)
C. Experiments LabVIEW software is used to implement the front panel and the block diagram. The block diagram holds the data flow and graphical source codes, which is useful for designing an HMI for robotics and automation systems. The front panel provides switches, counters, timers, and graphs in order to monitor and control the experiments. The block diagram supplies data flow and function tools with connectors, terminals, and wires. Each of the seven consecutive SCADA experiments is carried out in four distinct stages: 1) hardware properties; 2) software properties; 3) integration of the hardware and the software; and 4) evaluation of lab reports. The students were introduced to the experimental setups and PIC units and were then requested to develop their own PIC program and front-panel GUI with VI programs in LabVIEW. Table II shows the contributions of each step for evaluation of the experiment. Students are allowed to hand their reports in any official time in the following week. Implementations of the first four experiments are designed to use a PIC16F877-based hardware of the simple setup described in the authors’ previous paper [2]. Three additional advanced experiments (#5–#7) use a USB port, a USB-based Cartesian robot, and a TCP/IP-based robot arm. 1) Implementation of the USB Port: This experiment connects the PIC18F4550 board and graphical programming using LabVIEW via a USB port. Students are expected to read the status of switches and send these values to the LEDs through the USB port. This experiment helps students to understand the basics of the DAQ and digital communication protocols using a USB port. 2) Implementation of the USB-Based Cartesian Robot: This experiment connects the PIC18F4550 board with a general-purpose step motor driver card to the USB port, implementing realtime controlling and monitoring for a three-axis system. The
Cartesian robot has three axes, and thus has three degrees of freedom (DOF); these -, -, and -axes are controlled by a microcontroller board and step motor drivers via the LabVIEWdesigned GUI. Limit switches are used to prevent it passing the borders of each axis. Students follow these steps. a) Generate a USB-HMI driver using the “VISA Driver Development Wizard” and “VISA Interactive Controller” in National Instruments’ VISA program. b) Adjust the reference point to zero for the three axes using the reset button. c) Control the - - -axes of the Cartesian robot via the GUI. d) Transfer the axes’ coordinate and limit value data between the computer and microcontroller card. e) Control the step motors with pulse-width modulation (PWM) using a proportional control algorithm. f) Monitor the GUI. This experiment is designed as an advanced-level application to show students how a complex real-time application can be designed. 3) Implementation of the TCP/IP-Based Robot Arm: The last experiment is a multiexperimental system designed for connecting to the PIC18F452 board via TCP/IP communication protocol, using the TCP/IP port. The robot arm with its three DOF and its gripper are driven by servomotors via a microcontroller board and a LabVIEW-designed GUI. In addition, this experiment also includes temperature readings and an 8-bit input/output (I/O). The thermometer part of this experimental setup is realized using a DS1820 sensor. The 8-bit I/O part is implemented as were the serial port in Exp. #1 and the USB port in Exp. #5. The embedded TCP/IP port means the experimental system can be used for WAN and LAN applications. Students follow these steps. a) Generate TCP/IP and uni-datagram protocol (UDP) drivers using LabVIEW function blocks.
ŞAHIN AND İŞLER: MICROCONTROLLER-BASED ROBOTICS AND SCADA EXPERIMENTS
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
OF
TABLE III EXAMINATION GRADES ( STUDENTS)
NUMBER
OF
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TABLE IV TEST OF THE HOMOGENEITY OF VARIANCES
TABLE V ANOVA-TEST RESULTS FOR DIFFERENCES TO SHOW THE EFFECTS OF SETUP ON STUDENTS’ EXAM RESULTS
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
OF
TABLE VI EXAMINATION GRADES ( STUDENTS)
NUMBER
OF
Fig. 1. Mean grades of all enrolled students (lower line) and students passing the course (upper line).
b) Control the robot arm via a LabVIEW-designed GUI. c) Control servomotors with PWM used as proportional control for their states. d) Monitor the GUI. e) Read the status of switches and send this value to the LEDs through the TCP/IP port. This experiment is also designed as a SCADA-based robotics application. IV. EVALUATION The experimental setup and the suite of seven experiments were evaluated both quantitatively and qualitatively. A. Quantitative Evaluation The exam results over eight years of the SCADA Systems course were analyzed using SPSS statistical software. In the first three of these years, the experimental setup was not in place. The next two years featured the simple setup (Experiments 1–4), and the last three featured the complete setup (Experiments 1–7). The course had the same teacher, this paper’s first author, for all eight years. All the exams were prepared and graded by this teacher; their questions were determined by considering Bloom’s Taxonomy, a classification of educational learning objectives [20]. Therefore, throughout this period, the exams may be considered to be as similar as possible, and the experimental setup can be thought of as the major factor affecting student performance in the course. Table III gives the statistical results. Fig. 1 shows the mean grades over eight years of both all enrolled students and of the students who passed the exam. As
can be seen in Table III, there was a substantial improvement in mean grades after the introduction to the laboratory both of the simple setup and advanced setup. To analyze the statistical differences over these eight years, further statistical procedures were followed [2]. The statistical distributions of the eight-year grades were assumed to be normal upon visual inspection. Then the homogeneity of variances of grades had to be tested. The Levene statistic is probably the most commonly used test for this purpose in normal-distributed data. Applying this test (Table IV), the value shows that the hypothesis on the homogeneity of variances is valid. A one-way ANOVA analysis was performed at 0.05 significance level using the SPSS software package. Table V gives the test result as , which means that there is a statistically significant difference between years. However, this test does not indicate which years differ from others. To see this, Tukey’s honestly significant difference (HSD) test, a multiple comparison test in statistics, is applied, as in Table VI. These results classify student exam performance in three distinct groups: no experimental setup, the simple setup, and the advanced setup. The last rows show the statistical significance for each group. If the significance is greater than 0.05, that group may be assumed to be statistically indistinguishable. For example, student grades for 2003–2004, 2004–2005, and 2005–2006 must be considered statistically similar. Those for 2006–2007 and 2007–2008 and those of 2008–2009, 2009–2010 and 2010–2011 are also similar. However, those for 2005–2006 and 2006–2007 cannot be considered similar.
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The exam results indicate that there were statistically significant improvements both after the simple setup and after the advanced setup. B. Qualitative Evaluation A five-question survey was given at the end of the semester to obtain a qualitative evaluation of the performance of the experimental setup and experiments, using a Likert scale of Very Poor, Poor, Average, Good, and Excellent. The questions were as follows. 1) Do you think this course provides a deep understanding of, and application experience in, the subject of interest? 2) Do you think the educational materials used in the context of this course are adequate? 3) How does this course affect your motivation to continue your education in the field of automation? 4) Do you think this course provided you with the experience necessary for your professional life? 5) How useful did you find this course in your automation education? The survey results are summarized in Fig. 2(a) for the simple experimental setup and in Fig. 2(b) for the advanced experimental setups. The answers to the first and second questions show that most students agree that the SCADA Systems course helps them achieve the required desired level in terms of knowledge, experience, and educational materials. For the third question, 72% of students say that the course strongly motivated them in the field of automation technologies. Answers to the fourth question are in a somewhat different category in that students do not as yet have a professional life; this could account for the higher level of answers of Poor and Average. For the last question, students evaluated the lectures and found them adequate. Responses to the last question are very similar to those for the first three questions. V. DISCUSSION Turkey, and other developing countries, must keep up with modern technology for their industries to be able to compete in world markets. Since SCADA and other hardware devices may be beyond the budgets of the educational institutions of such countries, it is crucial to be able to implement teaching based on more affordable simulation tools. This paper has described the teaching of the concepts of industrial automation, data acquisition, instrumentation, using widely used communication ports (such as serial, parallel, USB, and TCP/IP), virtual instrumentation, and its development with LabVIEW. Acquiring experimental knowledge of these matters by means of seven laboratory experiments helps students to integrate the theoretical concepts. Although an evaluation copy of LabVIEW was used in the study to achieve minimal cost, the Internet-based communication technologies that are an important part of distributed systems such as SCADA [17] were also included. As a result, the experimental setups offer a good alternative to commercial ones. In addition, although this study had the goal of designing an experimental setup and experiments for the undergraduate level, these are also suitable for use in degree programs in electrical,
Fig. 2. Student responses to each survey question for the (a) simple setup and (b) advanced setups.
electronics, and control engineering in courses in control, instrumentation, and SCADA. The experimental setup is also suitable for project-based learning systems, and so can easily be integrated by engineering institutions and technical colleges that use project-based learning strategies. The course was modified over an eight-year period to achieve the desired learning outcomes. The exam results, analyzed in Table VI, indicate that there were three different statistically significant groups. It could be concluded that using experimental setups is essential to understanding technical subjects, and the more complex the experiments, the greater the students’ success. In addition, students stressed in oral feedback sessions that complex applications would help in increasing their motivation and self-confidence. Such setups can therefore be used for demonstration sessions to attract student attention and improve their motivation. Almost all student feedback was positive except that from students who had poor class attendance. Nevertheless, both the experimental setup and the experimental content have been gradually improved on the basis of this feedback. Because of the limitations of the evaluation version of LabVIEW, students were not introduced to the concepts of reading input data from the database and writing output data to
ŞAHIN AND İŞLER: MICROCONTROLLER-BASED ROBOTICS AND SCADA EXPERIMENTS
the database, nor to some other important concepts such as SQL operations and database security. This lack was addressed by recommending textbooks related to these topics [21], [22] and will be further addressed by their inclusion in graduate-level courses. Implementation details of both hardware and software are available upon request from the second author via e-mail and will be more widely available as soon as the course Web site is online. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank M. B. Öner, B. Kadioğlu, and O. Ergünay for their contributions during implementation of the setups, and M. Ölmez and M. B. Selek for encouragement to extend the study and to write this paper. REFERENCES [1] P. Bennell and J. Segerstrom, “Vocational education and training in developing countries: Has the World Bank got it right?,” Int. J. Educ. Dev., vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 271–287, 1998. [2] S. Sahin, M. Olmez, and Y. Isler, “Microcontroller-based experimental setup and experiments on SCADA education,” IEEE Trans. Educ., vol. 53, no. 3, pp. 437–444, Aug. 2010. [3] P. Chou, G. Ortega, and R. Borriello, “Synthesis of the hardware/software interface in microcontroller-based systems,” in Proc. Comput.Aided Design, 1992, vol. ICCAD-92, pp. 488–495. [4] A. Mader and H. Wupper, “Timed automation models for simple programmable logic controllers,” in Proc. 11 Euro Micro Conf. Real-Time Syst., 1999, pp. 106–113. [5] S. Sahin, Y. Isler, and M. B. Selek, “An example experiment in control of liquid level and temperature using virtual instruments,” J. Tech. Sci., Celal Bayar Univ., Soma Vocational School, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 1–10, 2007. [6] D. Ibrahim, Microcontroller Based Applied Digital Control. West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley, 2006. [7] A. G. Vicente, I. B. Munoz, J. L. L. Galilea, and P. A. R. del Toro, “Remote automation laboratory using a cluster of virtual machines,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 57, no. 10, pp. 3276–3283, Oct. 2010. [8] N. Ertugrul, “Towards virtual laboratories: A survey of LabVIEWbased teaching/learning tools and future trends,” Int. J. Eng. Educ., vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 171–180, 2000. [9] F. Adamo, F. Attivissimo, G. Cavone, and N. Giaquinto, “SCADA/HMI systems in advanced educational courses,” IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas., vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 4–10, Feb. 2007. [10] B. Qiu, H. B. Gooi, Y. Liu, and E. K. Chan, “Internet-based SCADA display system,” IEEE Comput. Appl. Power, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 14–19, Jan. 2002. [11] N. A. Kheir, K. J. Aström, D. Auslander, G. F. Cheok, G. F. Franklin, M. Masten, and M. Rabins, “Control system engineering education,” Automatica, vol. 32, pp. 147–166, 1996.
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[12] G. Faraco and L. Gabriele, “Using LabVIEW for applying mathematical models in representing phenomena,” Comput. Educ., vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 856–872, 2007. [13] M. S. Thomas, D. P. Kothari, and A. Prakash, “Design, development, and commissioning of a substation automation laboratory to enhance learning,” IEEE Trans. Educ., vol. 54, no. 2, pp. 286–293, May 2011. [14] J. M. Jimenez-Martinez, F. Soto, E. de Jodar, J. A. Villarejo, and J. Roca-Dorda, “A new approach for teaching power electronics converter experiments,” IEEE Trans. Educ., vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 513–519, Aug. 2005. [15] H. Salleh, T. F. Yusaf, and M. K. Z. Azlan, “Level control experiment via Internet,” in TENCON Proc., 2000, pp. 546–549. [16] M. Casini, D. Prattichizzo, and A. Vicino, “The automatic control telelab: A user-friendly interface for distance learning,” IEEE Trans. Educ., vol. 46, no. 2, pp. 252–257, May 2003. [17] L. K. Wells, LabVIEW Student Edition. Austin, TX, USA: National Instruments, 1996. [18] K. K. Tan, T. H. Lee, and F. M. Leu, “Development of a distant laboratory using LabVIEW,” Int. J. Eng. Educ., vol. 16, pp. 273–282, 2000. [19] N. I. Sarkar and T. M. Craig, “Illustrating computer hardware concepts using PIC-based projects,” in Proc. ACM SIGCSE, 2004, pp. 270–274. [20] D. R. Krathwohl, “A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy: An overview,” Theory Into Practice, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 212–218, 2002. [21] R. Krutz, Securing SCADA Systems. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley, 2005. [22] S. G. Tzafestas, Web-Based Control and Robotics Education. New York, NY, USA: Springer-Verlag, 2009. Savaş Şahin received the B.Sc. degree in electronics and communication engineering from Kocaeli University, Kocaeli, Turkey, in 1996, the M.Sc. degree in electrical and electronics engineering from Ege University, Izmir, Turkey, in 2003, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and electronics engineering from Dokuz Eylül University, Konak, Turkey, in 2010. He was an Instructor with the Department of Control and Automation, Ege Business and Technical College, Ege University, from 2000 to 2012. He has been working as Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, İzmir Katip Çelebi University, Izmir, Turkey, since 2012. His main research interests are in the fields of control systems, industrial automation, chaotic systems, and artificial neural networks.
Yalçin İşler (S’09–M’11) received the B.Sc. degree in electrical and electronics engineering from Anadolu University, Eskişehir, Turkey, in 1993, the M.Sc. degree in electronics and communication engineering from Süleyman Demirel University, Isparta, Turkey, in 1996, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and electronics engineering from Dokuz Eylül University, İzmir, Turkey, in 2009. From 1993 to 2000, he was a Lecturer with Burdur Vocational School, Süleyman Demirel University. He worked as a Software Engineer from 2000 to 2002. He was a Research Assistant with Zonguldak Karaelmas University, Zonguldak, Turkey, from 2002 to 2003 and with Dokuz Eylül University from 2003 to 2010. He was an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Zonguldak Karaelmas University, from 2010 to 2012. He has been working as an Assistant Professor with the Department of Biomedical Engineering, İzmir Katip Çelebi University, Izmir, Turkey, since 2012. His main research interests are in the fields of biomedical signal processing, computational neuroscience, genetic algorithms, and microcontroller-based board design.
