Christoph Sunder

Usability and Interoperability of IEC 61499 based distributed automation systems

Since IEC 61499 has reached the state of an international standard and a substantial body of research results exists the question of the authors as main intention for this paper was: Do the models of IEC 61499 solve all problems when thinking of usability and interoperability in heterogeneous system environments? The main problems discussed within the paper concern to the execution model defined for basic function blocks and the scheduling of events within function block networks.

Framework for Distributed Industrial Automation and Control (4DIAC)

This paper intends to provide a basis for the discussion and development of an Open Source Initiative for a ldquoFramework for distributed industrial automation and control (4DIAC) based on the new IEC 61499 standard. The general understanding of the authors is that an open source strategy is an adequate means for pushing current developments within the industrial automation domain and bringing together interested partners to focus and unite their concerns on a distributed and flexible automation environment. One main point is also to provide a stable basis for industrial appliances and further research into next generation distributed automation and control systems based on the IEC 61499 standard. A look at the current status of the developments for IEC 61499 shows, that these targets may not have been attained. In the opinion of the authors, the targets presented above need a common and publicly available reference framework. Therefore the general idea of the 4DIAC initiative is to provide such an open framework for the IEC 61499 standard that gives the opportunity to establish an automation and control environment based on the three main targets, portability, configurability and interoperability.

Zero Downtime Reconfiguration of Distributed Automation Systems: The εCEDAC Approach

Future manufacturing is envisioned to be highly flexible and adaptable. New technologies for reconfigurable systems and their adaptations are preconditions for this vision. Without such solutions, engineering adaptations of Industrial Process Measurement and Control Systems (IPMCS) will exceed the costs of engineered systems by far and the reuse of equipment will become inefficient. Especially the reconfiguration of control applications is not sufficiently solved. This paper gives an overview of the use of reconfiguration applications for downtimeless system evolution of control applications on basis of the standard IEC 61499. A new approach for the reconfiguration of IEC 61499 based control application and the corresponding modeling is discussed. This new method significantly increases engineering efficiency and reuse in component-based IPMCS.

Review article: Developments in dynamic and intelligent reconfiguration of industrial automation

This paper provides an overview of current techniques to allow the industrial systems to automatically adapt to change while maintaining predictable and stable system behaviour. This is performed along the dimensions of simple, dynamic and intelligent reconfiguration and focuses on the physical device and software component levels of the shop floor and in particular, on automatic reconfiguration of programmable logic controller systems. Through an analysis of recent work by the authors and others in this area, the paper identifies the basic requirements for intelligent reconfiguration and the outstanding issues in this area.

Executing real-time constrained control applications modelled in IEC 61499 with respect to dynamic reconfiguration

New fast moving markets demand flexible, adaptable production facilities to allow manufacturing companies a fast reaction on consumer needs. Reconfigurable manufacturing systems provide a solution for these problems. Currently used software architectures have not been designed for providing an infrastructure for such manufacturing systems. With the new standard IEC 61499 the International Electrotechnical Commission provides an architecture for flexible distributed control systems. But it leaves open points regarding real-time execution and reconfiguration in realtime. This work focuses on real-time execution of IEC 61499 applications. It describes all execution elements of IEC 61499 within a device. Different implementation and scheduling approaches are compared and discussed. A first real-time scheduling approach for IEC 61499 control applications allows executing applications with periodic real-time constraints in parallel to unconstrained applications. It serves as a base for an enhanced full featured IEC 61499 real-time execution support.

Functional structure-based modelling of automation systems

In modern production and assembly processes, conventional PLC-based architectures are state-of-the-art for control engineering and applications. These kinds of architectures cause high costs for engineering and maintenance, and specially the adaptation of applications or even hardware changes are problematic. The paper presents a new modular control architecture, designed to meet the requirements of future production systems. Control hardware and control software are modularised in the same manner as is given by the mechanical and functional structure. Even more, also the structure of the Human–Machine Interface (HMI) follows this target. The main benefits are given by hierarchical design of different views of the control software (logic, HMI, diagnostics) with the same structure as the physical devices, capable of providing easy engineering, maintenance and re-configuration of the production system. The concept has been verified by the use of a real-world material-handling example.

Model-driven embedded systems design environment for the industrial automation sector

The aim of this paper is to describe a model-driven embedded systems design approach which is applied to Industrial Automation and Control Systems (IACS). Therefore, an overview on existing model-driven approaches is given and their applicability for IACS is discussed. The special requirements of the industrial automation sector are taken into account by a novel architecture, utilizing existing model-driven techniques. This approach is the basis for the FP7 research project MEDEIA.

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.

Is IEC 61499 in harmony with IEC 61131-3?

This year marks the 16th anniversary of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 1131-3 (now IEC 61131-3), currently one of the most important standards in industrial automation. Four years before its release, it has been decided that it will define a further standard for programming industrial control systems, the IEC 61499 standard. One reason for this decision has been the remarkable, and still current study, of the Iacocca Institute [ 1 ]. This study identified: portability-software tools can accept and correctly interpret software components and system configurations produced by other software tools; interoperability-embedded devices can operate together to perform the functions needed for distributed applications; configurability-any device and its software components can be configured by software tools from multiple vendors; reconfiguration-the ability to adapt control hardware and software during operation; distribution-the ability to distribute software components onto different hardware devices, as requirements demanded from future industrial process measurement and control systems (IPMCS) by the automation industry.

Considering IEC 61131-3 and IEC 61499 in the context of component frameworks

Automation and control systems provide their own programming and modeling paradigms in parallel to theory well known from computer science. Especially the concepts of component-based software engineering highly influence the design of embedded systems, which include automation and control systems. This work analyses what is and is not a ldquosoftware componentrdquo in the context of the two standards IEC 61131-3 and IEC 61499. Utilizing the definition of component frameworks and component system architectures, the potentials and problems of an integrative approach in order to utilize both standards within the same platform was discussed.