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Progressive Cavity Pumps (PCP) is an artificial fluid lift method widely used in oil wells of Colombia, Canada and Venezuela, where the pump is driven by a rod connected to the motor located at the surface. Efficiency in energy production is critical, and the current control techniques used are based on discrete changes, seeking for an operational point. This approach can be improved, and optimization techniques proposed are presented in this paper. Strategies of control based on continuous adjustments of motor speed and fuzzy logic together with a downhole pressure sensor are simulated for this nonlinear system. Utilization of Kalman filtering, for estimation of the fluid level in wells that are not instrumented, is proposed. Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) also is used to optimize production performance. Results show good performance compared with current techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an experimental study, in several scenarios of energy consumption in a vapor compression refrigeration system when it operates using ON-OFF, linear and fuzzy logic control schemes. The proposed study scenarios pretend to emulate real operation conditions in refrigeration systems such as a disturbance produced by the door opening. In the test bench used in this study the ON-OFF, PID and fuzzy logic control strategies were implemented via Labview® and National Instruments® hardware. The system provides the energy consumption in each control strategy for a given set of conditions. In addition, the vapor temperature tuning is observed. The results reveal larger energy savings, near 25%, via linear control and fuzzy logic and a satisfactory tracking of the reference compared with ON-OFF. The results of this study can be used as support information when determining a control scheme for a large refrigeration system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper described the problem of path-planning in mobile robots in a partially structured environment. The work was divided in three parts: design of a mechatronic system, denominated Robot IO, study of advantages and disadvantages of three path-planning algorithms: neural nets, genetic algorithms and fuzzy logic, and implementation of algorithms that allow to identify the workspace where IO moves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]