Visual Layout Aspects of Remote Control Consoles

I've watched 'Pearl Harbour'..


I've experienced 'Das Boot'..


.. a great 80's movie about the sinking of a U Boat.  These films capture the emotion of men of action under pressure.  Under pressure, the sub's captain on the bridge and engine people have to make some hard decisions fast about how to maneuver the submarine and stay out of trouble. This post takes a look at the control panel layout in the maneuver room, and picks out some of the salient features for taking ACTION under PRESSURE.

When considering design layouts for graphics now, even though flexibility of graphics is great, layout is still important when it comes to taking ACTION under PRESSURE.  A simple logical layout helps, where focus is on the 'PRIMARY JOB FUNCTION' of the graphic.

To illustrate this, lets take a quick look at the 'Pearl Harbour Avenger' propulsion control deck layout to illustrate a few points about the different kinds of information and control types operators have to deal with, and get you thinking about the layout and how that may be important. As in Fig 1 - we are standing in the maneuvering room...

Maneuvering Room.

"Sandwiched between the engine rooms and the after torpedo room was a small watertight compartment callled the maneuvering room. Occupying the majority of this space was the main propulsion control cubicle.  Really a large manually operated switchgear and DC motor controller, the cubicle routed electricity from each of the four main diesel generators, the dinky diesel, and the two storage  batteries to connections for the main DC propulsion motors. The cubicle could connect one or more generators to either the motors of batteries for both the various combinations of battery charging and/or propulsion.  Speed controls and rheostats allowed the operation of the motors at various speeds and the generators at various voltage and currents." Us Submarines 1941-45 by Jim Christley, Tony Bryan

Fig 1 : The Maneuvering Room - Main Propulsion Control Cubicle - USS Bowfin Submarine, Hawaii.
Attribution: flickr/cliff1066 Creative Commons Licence

In modern day parlance, the watertight maneuver room and the engineer safely inside it, acts as a supervisory control slave to the bridge command.  The engineer takes charge of setting the rotations of either the port or starboard DC engines driving the propellers.  He also handles charging the batteries and looking after the engines, but his 'primary job function' is to set the speed of the port and starboard motors in accordance with the telegraphed signals from the bridge. Figure 2 shows the layout of the panel in general terms and illustrates the location of the 'primary job function'.

Figure 2 : The Primary job function of the 'Remote Supervised  Maneuver Room'

The yellow circles highlight the 'supervisory command' telegraphed from the bridge, which comes down as 'Full Ahead' for example, and the actual revolutions measured at the top.  The 'feedback' to the bridge is provided by the propulsion engineer after carrying out the control command using the control yokes and rheostats.

Note the placement of the primary job function and its separation between PORT and STARBOARD propellers.  Simply by careful placement, mistakes can be avoided.   Note also the location of the main direct controls for the generators and motors.  These are to the bottom of the layout, whereas key electrical metered variables are provided at eye height and above.

Nowadays of course, all our supervisory control graphics are very well rendered and layout is quite flexible. Making sure that the right information is presented to assist in the 'primary job function', without distracting from it, and your operating teams will be happier and more predictable in taking action under pressure.

Invensys operations management provides the right kind of award winning SCADA/HMI technology to make the alignment of Job Function, Control, Safety and Measurement information easy. Invensys SCADA Graphics Technology.

Appreciate your comments and feedback on this topic at any time. - CJS Jan 2012

PS: If you want to see a great submarine film... check out 'DAS BOOT'