Industrial HMI Query Highlighting for Faster Device Identification
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Solution Overview
Problem
In industrial automation environments, identifying specific devices within a complex human machine interface (HMI) is time-consuming and difficult due to the large number of components and intricate relationships between them.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that uses non-transitory computer-readable storage media with program instructions to receive user queries and visually distinguish graphical elements representing industrial devices that match the query criteria from others, allowing for easier identification and management of devices needing updates, maintenance, or attention.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If the HMI displays all industrial devices and their relationships, then complete information is provided, but device identification becomes time-consuming and difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and highlights only the specific device or devices that match the user's query criteria from the complete HMI display. This allows the full information to remain available while extracting the relevant portion for focused attention, thereby reducing identification time without losing information completeness.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent uses visual differentiation through color changes and highlighting to distinguish queried devices from other devices in the HMI. This visual emphasis allows users to quickly locate specific devices without having to search through the entire complex display, thus reducing identification time while maintaining complete information visibility.
2Reliability
If the HMI displays all components and relationships, then comprehensive monitoring is achieved, but the interface complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the HMI display into distinguished and non-distinguished portions based on query criteria. This segmentation allows the comprehensive monitoring information to remain available while visually separating the relevant subset, thereby reducing perceived interface complexity without sacrificing monitoring completeness.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies local quality by providing different visual treatments to different portions of the HMI display. Queried devices receive enhanced visual properties (highlighting, color changes) while other devices maintain their standard appearance, allowing comprehensive information display with reduced perceived complexity through localized visual enhancement.
3Productivity
If visual highlighting is applied to queried devices, then device identification speed increases, but visual distinction complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs color changes and visual highlighting as a straightforward mechanism to distinguish queried devices. This approach increases identification speed through obvious visual cues while maintaining relatively simple visual processing complexity by using standard graphical interface techniques rather than complex visual transformations.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques to facilitate device identification in a human machine interface (HMI) associated with an industrial automation environment are disclosed herein. In at least one implementation, the HMI is configured to display a plurality of graphical elements that represent one or more industrial devices. A user query selection of at least one query-building element is received. One or more of the graphical elements in the HMI that represent the one or more industrial devices that correlate to the at least one query-building element is identified. The one or more of the graphical elements that correlate to the at least one query-building element is visually distinguished distinctly from a remainder of the graphical elements that do not correlate to the at least one query-building element.