The paper presents the development of a training complex for the portal crane operator to train and test his practical skills in the loading and unloading procedures in real time. A portal crane “Albatros”, the prevalent in Russia, was chosen as the imitation object. Due to the fact that education by means of real cranes is labor-intensive and time-consuming on account of their ineffective exploitation and maintenance, in this paper, we pay a great attention on the problem of training crane machinists and the task of educating them with the use of computer simulators. We discuss the first computer simulator for training portal crane operators developed in Perm National Research Polytechnic University, its functionality and single out its shortcomings. We also introduce a module architecture of the training complex software of new generation, developed within our on-going project. It comprises the following modules: the core of the training complex (which connects all other modules together), visualization means (responsible for rendering the environment of the portal crane and the operator's workplace), physical and mathematical modeling module, computer-aided learning system, control devices (represented in terms of a real crane desk) and output device. Furthermore, we introduce a network architecture of the training complex, represented by the trainee's and tutor's workplaces connected with each other by the local network. The training complex incorporates the implemented computer-aided learning system which, in contrast to existing systems, leverages fuzzy logic for assessing the success in fulfilling exercises by the trainee and conveys a manager of different complexity levels for training operators.

computer training complex, automated training system, operator, modeling, physical processes, software, visualization, exercise.