Michael Schlereth

A Multidimensional Approach for Concurrent Model-Driven Automation Engineering

Mechatronic engineering is about integration of different engineering disciplines, mainly mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and software engineering. Within the machine and plant engineering process, software engineering is part of automation engineering, which deals with configuration and programming of devices like programmable logic controllers (PLC), motion controllers, and human machine interface (HMI) ABstrAct

Support for Bidirectional Model-to-Text Transformations

In recent years, model-driven approaches and processes have established themselves as pragmatic and feasible solutions with tangible advantages. Transformations play a central role in any model-driven solution and, as interest in textual modelling grows, providing concepts and tools for supporting a high-level and declarative specification of bidirectional model-to-text transformations becomes a vital area of research. Our paper identifies important areas and scenarios for model-to-text transformations that are not or only partially supported by currently existing solutions. Based on the requirements of a real-world case study, we introduce a new concept that has been inspired by a successful bidirectional model-to-model transformation approach: Triple Graph Grammars.

Integrated Graph Transformations in Automation Systems

Abstract A crucial part of the automation system engineering consists of the reconciliation of engineering models. Hence, information from a source model is used to generate instances of a target model. For example, for each element in the plant and instrumentation diagram (P&ID) a corresponding representative is generated on the operator screen of the human machine interface (HMI). Most of those reconciliations follow simple rules. Nevertheless, due to the lack of tool support, most of this work is done manually. On the other hand, well studied transformation techniques exist, whichin the field of model driven development. The paper combines the concept of model transformation with the help of triple graph grammars (TGGs) and the approach of an integrated rule-based system to gain a formal background for the model transformation at runtime of an automation system. It will be demonstrated that TGGs are suitable to formulate the transformation rules in automation system engineering and that the rules can be generated by the system engineer without additional knowledge. Further, the paper proposes the adaption of the existing rule-based system ACPLT/RE to the concepts of bidirectional TGG rules to benefit from the possibilities of the TGG concept for model transformation at runtime. Finally the potential of model transformation at runtime with special focus on automation system engineering is demonstrated with the help of the flow analysis example.