Bernard Favre-Bulle

Application of an ontology in a transport domain

This paper presents an application of an ontology in combination with multi-agent technologies in a transport domain. The need for flexibility and agility in this domain is continuously growing due to the increasing complexity in the processes where this domain is used. The ontology, we propose, is shared among agents and provides the common agreement and understanding about the used concepts. This approach offers a convenient way for design and control of distributed systems reducing their complexity, increasing flexibility and enhancing fault tolerance.

The Past, Present, and Future of IEC 61499

In 1991, Technical Committee 65 (TC65) of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) approved a New Work Item (NWI) for the development of an international standard for the use of software objects known as Function Blocks (FBs) in distributed Industrial-Process Measurement and Control Systems (dIPMCS). The need for this new standard resulted out of several studies and research programs that have been started or conducted in the late eighties and early nineties of the last century. IEC 61499 got finally standardized in January 2005. Before that, since 2000, it was available in the form of a so-called Public Available Specification (PAS). Although IEC 61499 has been available for so long, up to now most published work on it has been academic or resulted only in prototypical test cases. Most activities around the IEC 61499 standard have been in standardization of the execution environment and definition of semantics. Some current research is in pursuing design and coding tools. This paper gives and overview about the past and present activities and implementations related to IEC 61499 and discusses the potential of this new standard for future application scenarios.

Towards Reconfiguration Applications as basis for Control System Evolution in Zero-downtime Automation Systems

Publisher Summary Industrial Automation and Control Systems will evolve toward downtimeless, adaptable, and distributed real-time systems. The reconfiguration of control applications is not sufficiently solved by state-of-the-art technology. This chapter presents an overview of the use of reconfiguration applications for downtimeless system evolution of control applications on basis of the standard IEC 61499. This new methodology combines the need for close interaction with the application/physical process and the existing knowledge about the modeling of control applications. By use of a representative example the structure, the required instruction set and the methodology for the downtimeless system evolution utilizing a reconfiguration application are described. The special requirements, which concern the topics verification, failure handling, and the runtime platform, are also presented.

Formal description of an IEC 61499 runtime environment with real-time constraints

This paper investigates on the introduction of the runtime behavior and real-time constraints into the verification process of IEC 61499 based automation systems. In detail, the event propagation policies as well as the necessary execution time for all actions within the automation system need to be described for a complete model of the automation system. The basis of the formal description provides an analytic methodology for the event propagation policy of an IEC 61499 runtime implementation. By use of this methodology within the formal model of the runtime environment, the overall system behavior can be described also in the case of reactive systems properties.

Intelligent reconfiguration using knowledge based agent system

The new reconfigurable manufacturing paradigm requires development of systematic methods, and software tools, for the rapid design and builds up of production systems that change the capacity and functionality in response to the market demand. The effectiveness of reconfiguration depends upon the development of such tools. In this work, the new concept consisting of ontology knowledge based systems in connection with software agents are applied for the solution of the reconfiguration problem. Reconfigurability is achieved by the employment of the most modern technologies such as ontology driven solution

Hierarchical Control Modelling Architecture for Modular Distributed Automation Systems

Modern design approaches for manufacturing system organize the control architecture in the same way as the functional structure of the plant. This leads to a modular approach that is based on composition of automation components. This paper introduces a hierarchical architecture that is based on a generic internal structure of automation components. This includes logic, diagnostics as well as human machine interface (HMI). The HMI architecture is again organized in the same way as the functional structure of the plant. This results in a clear modelling process enabling reduced engineering effort and simple maintenance. It can also serve as a basic architecture for reconfiguration approaches.

Intuitive control engineering for mechatronic components in distributed automation systems based on the reference model of IEC 61499

Current research on mechatronic engineering focuses mainly on engineering methodologies. This paper presents a new architecture based on the reference model of IEC 61499. This architecture includes both, the engineering view of a device represented by its services and their representation within the control application as function blocks that are used within the whole distributed automation system. The services of a mechatronic component are its special functionalities, for instance motion in the case of a linear servo drive. The direct relation between services and IEC 61499 function blocks enables simple and intuitive control engineering for the user. In this paper the usage of this novel integrated approach is demonstrated by the example of a linear axis. Each movement of the axis corresponds to a certain function block. The control application itself is modeled by associating the motion sequence with the services encapsulated in function blocks. The embedded control platform of the mechatronic component executes the application control logic and each device within the network is able to access the services of a certain mechatronic component. Therefore device vendors are able to enhance their products by integrating their special intellectual property. The users can access the functionality of the mechatronic components without regard to its implementation details.

Advanced use of PLCopen motion control library for autonomous servo drives in IEC 61499 based automation and control systems

This article presents the use of autonomous components for motion control applications in distributed automation systems. Current realizations based on IEC 61131 lack of a seamless integration into the resulting system consisting of functional units. The basis for the new concept is the PLCopen Motion Control Library which is applied to the reference model of the new standard IEC 61499.In diesem Beitrag wird die Verwendung von autonomen Komponenten für die Steuerung von Bewegungen in verteilten Automatisierungssystemen behandelt. Aktuellen Realisierungen, die auf dem Standard IEC 61131 beruhen, fehlt hier vor allem die durchgängige Integration in das dabei entstehende System aus funktionalen Einheiten. Die Basis für das neue Konzept bildet die Motion Control Library der PLCopen, die auf das Referenzmodell der IEC 61499 angewendet wird.

Ontology-based resource allocation in distributed systems using director facilitator agents

Multi-Agent Systems provide a suitable concept to easily map processes, interaction and knowledge into agents. This paper discusses the development of ontology-based multi-agent system and explores some performance of the system. We also present a typical scenario for resource allocation and demonstrate a promising approach for integration of process planning and scheduling functions.

Towards an Approach for the Verification of Downtimeless System Evolution

This paper presents ongoing work focused on dynamic reconfiguration of industrial automation systems as a part of their total life cycle. Modification of the control logic has to be enabled at runtime and without any disturbances of related applications. The epsivCEDAC engineering cycle for dynamic system evolution is based on the use of an IEC 61499 reconfiguration application responsible for the dynamic transformation of the program during its execution. The verification of this evolution step takes the central role in this engineering cycle. The paper discusses the general requirements for this kind of verification. Especially the capabilities of the automation system - the used hardware and software - form a major point. The paper describes the basic concepts and ongoing work regarding the verification of downtimeless system evolution.