Goals and strategies in the global control design of the OAJ Robotic Observatory
There are many ways to solve the challenging problem of making a high
performance robotic observatory from scratch. The Observatorio
Astrof\’isico de Javalambre (OAJ) is a new astronomical facility located
at the Sierra de Javalambre (Teruel, Spain) whose primary role will be
to conduct all-sky astronomical surveys. The OAJ control system has been
designed under a global point of view including not only astronomical
subsystems but also infrastructure and other facilities. Three main
factors have been considered in the design of a global control system
for the robotic OAJ: quality, reliability and efficiency. We propose CIA
(Control Integrated Architecture) design and OEE (Overall Equipment
Effectiveness) as a key performance indicator in order to improve
operation processes, minimizing resources and obtain high cost reduction
maintaining quality requirements. The OAJ subsystems considered for the
control integrated architecture are the following: two wide-field
telescopes and their instrumentation, active optics subsystems,
facilities for sky quality monitoring (seeing, extinction, sky
background, sky brightness, clouds distribution, meteorological
station), domes and several infrastructure facilities such as water
supply, glycol water, water treatment plant, air conditioning,
compressed air, LN2 plant, illumination, surveillance, access control,
fire suppression, electrical generators, electrical distribution,
electrical consumption, communication network, Uninterruptible Power
Supply and two main control rooms, one at the OAJ and other remotely
located in Teruel at 40km from the observatory, connected through a
microwave radio-link. Here we present the OAJ strategy in control design
to achieve maximum quality efficiency for the observatory processes and
operations, giving practical examples of our approach.