Programmable wiring system supports remote and sustainable management
Programmable wiring can make experimentation faster, safer and more widely accessible
Sponsored by Abu Dhabi University
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Researchers at Abu Dhabi University (ADU) have developed a programmable wiring system (PWS) that allows users to configure their wiring remotely.
“The PWS turns wiring from a fixed constraint to a programmable resource,” says Mohammad Alkhedher, a professor of mechanical engineering at the university. A single hardware platform can control a building’s air conditioning and energy management systems and serve as an emergency response unit.
Established in 2003, ADU caters to around 8,700 students across its campuses and is a leading institution in the region. It is committed to research that contributes to knowledge creation, the economy and society.
The PWS is an example of such innovation, and ADU’s researchers have patented the technology and are ramping up its applications in the classroom and in industry.
A major obstacle for many embedded and mechatronic systems is how to wire many sensors – which receive information about the real world – and actuators – such as sirens or flashing lights – to circuits. “The real bottleneck is not the controller, but how flexibly we can wire it to sensors and actuators,” says Alkhedher.
The PWS could play an important role in teaching. “In university laboratories, a single reconfigurable platform can replace several dedicated trainer kits of heat, ventilation and air conditioning system, emergency systems, energy management and general embedded systems teaching,” he says. This lowers cost and space requirements and gives students a “more authentic experience of how controllers are reused across different mechanical and industrial applications”, Alkhedher says.
The PWS has applications beyond education, particularly through rapid prototyping and testing in Internet-of-Things and embedded systems. “Engineers can iterate control strategies for smart buildings, robotics and industrial automation much faster,” he says.
Having boards that are programmable is better for the planet, Alkhedher notes: “Reducing the number of boards and rewiring steps has an environmental benefit by extending the useful life of lab and test equipment and avoiding multiple single-purpose boards that quickly become obsolete.”
Collaboration is vital to creating solutions that apply to different academic fields and have industrial applications, he says. The project brings together researchers from multiple disciplines, such as mechatronics, and electrical, computer and mechanical engineering. “This ensures that the platform serves both the electronics community and the applied mechanical systems community,” Alkhedher says.
Partnerships with industry and government stakeholders allow the researchers to develop the technology for real-world scenarios, he says: “Discussions with partners in automation, energy and training highlight the need for flexible, low-maintenance rigs and training platforms that can support multiple standards and devices without constant rewiring.”
The design “explicitly supports remote prototyping and testing”, Alkhedher says. “Circuits can be reconfigured over the internet, allowing the same PWS hardware to serve students and engineers in different locations and time zones.” This is particularly important, given the rise in remote and hybrid work and laboratories.
Alkhedher says the team plans to develop a family of scalable products. These include compact classroom kits, high-density racks for university and industrial labs, and cloud-connected versions that can be shared across institutions as remote laboratories.
“I envision programmable wiring becoming a standard layer between applications and hardware, making experimentation faster, safer and more widely accessible,” he says.