Rafal Cupek

Agent-based manufacturing execution systems for short-series production scheduling

This paper presents the architecture of Agent-based Manufacturing Execution Systems dedicated for short-series production support. The functional models are based on the ANSI/ISA-95 (IEC/ISO 62264) standard. The workflow and information exchange for Manufacturing Operations Management are defined by ISA 95 and implemented under a dynamic Agent-based environment. The proposed system is organised as a fully heterarchical architecture, without a central administration or system orchestrators. Unlike most of the existing agent software that are based on Java, the proposed solution is based on Microsofts Model-View-Controller and was created under the ASP.NET technology. Holons, which collect information from the real production system, are a Cyber Physical part of the application. Agents process information using Internet services that are available for human users and for the other agents as well. The proposed approach has been verified on the use case of the system that was created to support the production of electronic devices in the Prototyping Department of Continental Ingolstadt. The system model, applied communication mechanisms and examples of agents are presented in this paper. The research part of this paper is focussed on simulation-based planning for a short-series production schedule. The simulation results can be used to support the decision-making process.

A Survey of ADAS Technologies for the Future Perspective of Sensor Fusion

Traffic has become more complex in recent years and therefore the expectations that are placed on automobiles have also risen sharply. Support for drivers and the protection of the occupants of vehicles and other persons involved in road traffic have become essential. Rapid technical developments and innovative advances in recent years have enabled the development of plenty of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems that are based on different working principles such as radar, lidar or camera techniques. Some systems only warn the drivers via a visual, audible or haptical signal of a danger. Other systems are used to actively engage in the control of a vehicle in emergency situations. Although technical development is already quite mature, there are still many development opportunities for improving road safety. The further development of current applications and the creation of new applications that are based on sensor fusion are essential for the future. A short summary of capabilities of ADAS systems and selected ADAS modules was presented in this paper. The review was selected toward the future perspective of sensors fusion applied on the autonomous mobile platform.

Object Oriented Vertical Communication in Distributed Industrial Systems

Low level industrial systems use simple data representation which reflects flat input and output structure of control industrial system. This structure is directly mapped to the flat memory allocation. The structural data organization is used in upper layers of industrial computer system. This article contains compare analysis of tag and object oriented data model used for vertical communication in distributed industrial computer systems. This analysis is based on classical tag approach used in the most of classical visualization systems and object oriented approach introduced in OPC UA architecture.

An Ontology Model for Communicating with an Autonomous Mobile Platform

This document presents an ontology-based communication interface dedicated for an autonomous mobile platform (AMP). All data between the Platform and other controllers such as PCs or AMPs are exchanged using standardized services. This solution not only allows the required measurement information and its states to be received from an AMP but also control of the Platform. The first advantage is that all of the information is available through an XML file. The second advantage is better possibility for controlling the AMP using external machines that can monitor the route of the AMP. In the case of avoiding obstacles, an external machine can, with the existing sensors and services, help the AMP come back via the correct route. The structure for the data for the Platform is described as set of standardized services such as information about the existing configuration and the status of any installed sensors. The XML format helps to structure information by adding metadata. To create a fully functioning system, it is necessary to add a semantic model (relations between the elements and services) of the AMP services. This paper describes one possible solution for creating ontology model, using the current configuration, services for monitor and services for control of the AMP.

OPC UA Object Oriented Model for Public Transportation System

This paper presents an object oriented model of public transportation system based on OLE for Process Control Unified Architecture (OPC UA), including communications flow and data structure models. The OPC UA is a successor of the classic OPC - a common communication standard used in industrial systems. Its object oriented architecture allows flexible flow of information and easy data exchange between Control Systems (CS) and Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP). Despite of increasing usage of OPC UA, it has not been applied in such systems yet. In this paper, authors introduce adaptation of the OPC UA as a solution for real-time management of large amount of data coming from public transportation system and discuss potential and limitations of proposed model.

Review of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS)

New cars can be equipped with many advanced safety solutions. Airbags, seatbelts and all of the essential passive safety parts are standard equipment. Now cars are often equipped with new advanced active safety systems that can prevent accidents. The functions of the Advanced Driver Assistance Systems are still growing. A review of the most popular available technologies used in ADAS and descriptions of their application areas are discussed in this paper.New cars can be equipped with many advanced safety solutions. Airbags, seatbelts and all of the essential passive safety parts are standard equipment. Now cars are often equipped with new advanced active safety systems that can prevent accidents. The functions of the Advanced Driver Assistance Systems are still growing. A review of the most popular available technologies used in ADAS and descriptions of their application areas are discussed in this paper.

Online energy efficiency assessment in serial production - statistical and data mining approaches

Due to increasing energy costs and the demand to lower CO2 emissions in the production, companies try to apply energy efficient technologies in green (new installations) and brown (modernized installation) production systems. Hence, the procedures of energy efficiency assessment have to be integrated with production systems on the machine control level. Presented work compares the energy efficiency assessment based on statistical analysis with an approach based on data mining and cluster analysis. Experimental results have shown limitations and possible application fields for both methods. Even though the presented methodology was conducted on compressed air consumption monitoring system, it can also be easily applicable for other types of consumed energy.

Agent-based Modeling for Warehouse Logistics Systems

Nowadays decision-making systems are getting more complex every year by collecting different kinds of data and therefore requiring sophisticated analysis. Agent-based Modeling is a new approach in modeling decision-making systems, which allows more flexibility than standard central management systems. This paper presents an agent-based model applied for warehouse logistics system. It shows the advantages of agent-based modeling against standard central management systems. The authors present here the possible analysis for optimizing such a complex system which is the factorys warehouse.

OPC UA for vertical communication in logistic informatics systems

Logistic systems play a crucial role in organization and management of every large enterprise. One very important issue is a vertical communication between localized on factory floor level data sources and business application level logistic systems. OPC UA allows for creating flexible and scalable vertical communication interface. Many interconnection problems related with communication between control and business level of IT applications may be solved with object oriented and extensible OPC UA standard. Authors describe a case study of OPC UA interface for a given logistic system. The definition of logistic system and relevant OPC UA objects will be proposed. This work was supported by the European Union from the European Social Fund and was realized as part of “EkDan” Project in Institute of Informatics Silesian University of Technology.

Passive PROFIET I/O OPC DA Server

This paper describes a PROFINET I/O passive OPC Server that was realized as a students project built at the Institute of Informatics, Silesian University of Technology in cooperation with the company Softing A.G. The authors describe the project idea and present the practical results of the experiment. The results prove the thesis that the proposed solution for data exchange between horizontal and vertical industrial communication systems can give better data resolution and lower system overheads. The presented idea may be the basis for future works on vertical communication for industrial real-time systems.