Joao Marco Mendes

Factory of the Future: A Service-oriented System of Modular, Dynamic Reconfigurable and Collaborative Systems

Modern enterprises operate on a global scale and depend on complex business processes performed in highly distributed production systems. Business continuity needs to be guaranteed, while changes at some or many of the distributed shop-floors should happen on-the-fly without stopping the production process as a whole. Unfortunately, there are limits and barriers that hinder the business requirements in beating tackled timely in the shop-floors due to missing modularity, agile reconfigurability, collaboration and open communication among the systems. However, as the number of sophisticated networked embedded devices in the shop-floors increases, service-oriented architecture (SOA) concepts can now be pushed down from the upper information technology level to the device level, and provide a better collaboration between the business systems and the production systems. This leads to highly modular, dynamic reconfigurable factories that build a collaborative system of systems that can adapt and optimize its behaviour to achieve the business goals. The work presented in this chapter shows directions to achieve this dynamism by means of SOA introduction in all layers, increased collaboration and close coupling of production sites and enterprise systems.

A Framework for Development and Implementation of Web service-Based Intelligent Autonomous Mechatronics Components

In this paper, a framework to support the transition of existing (legacy) production systems to a new Intelligent Autonomous Mechatronics Components-based (IAMC) collaborative structure has been addressed. After a first overview of the key enabling technologies and methods, the authors propose integrating Web-based service-oriented architecture and a software-based framework for implementing a platform to allow collaborative production automation behaviours. As one of the major outcomes of the application of this approach at industrial level, the authors address the few hardware investments and the facilitation of integrating legacy systems. In the research and development contexts of the contribution, the authors identify some key objectives that still need to be realised and/or improved, in order to allow a broad implementation of IAMC-based collaborative automation systems in the industry.

Industrial Agents in the Era of Service-Oriented Architectures and Cloud-Based Industrial Infrastructures

Abstract The umbrella paradigm underpinning novel collaborative industrial systems is to consider the set of intelligent system units as a conglomerate of distributed, autonomous, intelligent, proactive, fault-tolerant, and reusable units, which operate as a set of cooperating entities. The application of the industrial agents paradigm is well-fit to act as an enabler for mastering such collaborative industrial systems, especially in conjunction with the prevalence of service-oriented architectures and cloud technologies. The overall combination is seen as promising in the effort to unleash the benefit stemming from the utilization of such sophisticated industrial systems.

Service-oriented architecture approach for industrial “System of Systems”: State-of-the-Art for Energy Management

Nowadays, energy is one of the most misused resources on Earth. This phenomenon is caused because of the continuing technological expansion in different areas such as building automation, oil & power, industry in general, and much more areas where energy consumption is extremely high. In this paper, the State-of-the-Art for Energy Management (EM) is based on the new technological advances which have been summarized in topics, such as: standard ISA 95, Web Services (WS), Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), System of Systems (SoS), European Projects, Industrial Implementations, and the future challenge for EM, ending with some conclusions. The purpose of this document is an analysis of the new technological approaches for EM, integrating from the actual communication protocols, human-machine interfaces (HMI), Supervisory-Control and Data Acquisition Systems (SCADA), Distributed Control Systems (DCS), sensors, actuators, used in different areas such as manufacturing, machine builders, power plants, water pumping systems, etc., beyond to large SoS integration. Finally, it can be summarized that this paper presents the actual State-of-the-Art about SoS technology focused to an EM research based on a topic that today has a lot of importance worldwide. As energy consumption in SoS is increasing, the objective today and in the future is to generate an energy efficient SoS.

Decision support system in a service-oriented control architecture for industrial automation

Service-oriented paradigm is becoming a suitable approach to address the demand for distributed and reconfigurable control systems in industrial and factory automation environments. This paper discusses a decision support system approach for the conflict resolution and exception handling in a service-oriented control architecture for industrial automation, that uses high-level Petri nets to implement the system process control. The proposed decision support system is based on two granularity levels, one related to decision mechanisms embedded in local control components and other related to upper and global intelligent entities that provide decision-making services.

Service-oriented process control using High-Level Petri Nets

Service-oriented systems constitute a suitable approach for the development of modular, flexible and reconfigurable production systems, addressing the current requirements imposed by global markets. This paper focuses on the process control of Service-oriented production systems, whose behavior is regulated by the coordination of services that are available from distributed modular and collaborative control components. The proposed control is based on a kind of High-level Petri Nets tailored for the description, connection and synchronization of different concurrent processes. Several features can be distinguished by this approach, since its modularity, control reusability, flexibility and other valuable inherited characteristics from the proposed High-Level Petri Nets.

Distributed Control Patterns using Device Profile for Web Services

Automation systems are changing from the centric-controlled approach to a more flexible and autonomous behavior. The contribution to this philosophy comes from several technologies, including service-oriented concepts. This work focus on some open points of enhanced communication and control patterns and presents it in form of a multi-use communication module. For the development of such systems, the SOA4D implementation of device profile for Web services (DPWS) was used. The specified communication structure that works on top of the DPWS toolkit can be integrated in software applications targeting but not limited to embedded devices. The resulting interaction patterns also establish a stronger association to real life services and define flexible communication routines between service requester and provider.

Behaviour and integration of service-oriented automation and production devices at the shop-floor

Automation and manufacturing systems are changing in the direction of cooperative ecosystems with heterogeneous entities. An important feature that should be considered is the vertical integration from the business needs down to the shop-floor where the real action takes place. This paper analyses the integration of shop-floor devices into the IT-enterprise but maintaining also a certain degree of independence in terms of behaviour. Service-oriented paradigm is used as the main backbone due its proven merits in the business levels and recently also in automation and production systems. In the provided example, high-level Petri nets (HLPN) demonstrate a set of useful features, namely the partial behaviour description and analysis and some parameters in the integration. The resulting application leads to an easy integration of autonomous devices in the IT-enterprise, taking especially in account the requirements of the shop-floor level.

Reconfigurable production control systems: beyond ADACOR

Abstract In the recent evolution of production control systems, the emergence of decentralized systems capable of dealing with the rapid changes in the production environment better than the traditional centralized architectures has been one of the most significant developments. The agent-based and holonic paradigms symbolize this approach, and ADACOR holonic control architecture is a successful example of such a system. In this paper, authors discusses the current challenges and the way to go in the direction of new, reconfigurable, evolvable and ubiquitous systems, able to respond to current production environment demands and variability.

New developments on fibre optic colorimetrie sensors for dissolved CO 2 in aquatic environments

The detection of dissolved carbon dioxide (dCO2) is made possible through a colorimetric effect that occurs in a sensitive membrane. The reaction with dCO2 changes the pH of the membrane causing a small difference in its colour which results in a characteristic absorbance spectrum band near 435 nm. A sensing platform based on this effect was developed and tested in gaseous and in aqueous environments. It is a combination of a bundle of large core fibre optics (with diameters above 200 μm) with light emission diodes (LEDs) in the visible range of the spectrum, a silicon photodetector and a polymer membrane sensitive to CO2. A variation in the absorption of 3 / %VV was obtained in the range from 0 to 1.6 % of gaseous CO2 with an estimated response time below 60 seconds.