A Distributed Control Environment for Reconfigurable Manufacturing

T. Strasser^a, I. Müller^a, A. Zoitl^b, C. Sünder^b, G. Grabmair^c

Outline

• Introduction
• Reconfiguration requirements on lower level conrol
• IEC 61499 as a reference model for reconfigurable distributed control at real-time level
• Engineering & runtime environment for distributed automation and control systems
• Demonstration prototype
• Acknowledgements

Introduction

• New Paradigms
• Flexible production up to lot size 1
• Mass customization
• Zero downtime production ...
• Require new technologies in the field of production and manufacturing systems are needed
• Therefore future products, machines, plants and there components are built up
• from flexible autonomous and
• intelligent mechatronic components
• to a distributed system

Introduction

• With a number of advantages and new opportunities
• higher modularity
• higher flexiblity
• reconfigurability (physical and logical)
• improved scalability in functionality and computing performance
• simpler system design and engineering
• through the usage of functional complete mechatronic components
• improved real-time behaviour
• through local computing performance
• higher system availability through systematic distribution

Introduction

• Distributed embedded real-time systems play an important role in this concept
• Such systems should economically be changed by controlled evolution
• Production downtimes during system evolution need to be avoided
• Controlled evolution of distributed embedded real-time Industrial Automation and Control Systems (IACS) is therefore a prerequisite
• Component-based reconfiguration of control logic is technically hardly possilbe in current IACS architectures
• IEC 61499 - "Function Blocks for Industrial Process Measurement and Control Systems" features first basic concepts
• it defines platform independent reconfiguration services at device level

Reconfiguration requirements on lower-level control

• Requirements introduced through the domain
• Predictability
• Usability
• Durability
• Standards compliance
• Real time reconfiguration with guarantees
• Reconfiguration process requirements
• Failure detection and system monitoring
• Failure diagnosis, selection and initialization of
  recovery applications

Reconfiguration requirements on lower-level control

• Requirements for engineering of reconfiguration applications
• Application centred engineering
• Different engineering views
• Verification and validation
• Version control
• Transition management

IEC 61499 as a reference model

• Main characteristics of IEC 61499
• Component oriented basic building blocks called FBs
• Graphical intuitive way of modeling control algorithms through the connection of FBs
• Direct support for distribution
• Definitions for the interaction between devices of different vendors
• Basic support for reconfiguration
• Based on existing standards of the domain

IEC 61499 as a reference model

• Management interface of IEC 61499 devices

IEC 61499 as a reference model

• Management interface of IEC 61499 devices

Engineering & runtime environment

• Approach for controlled evolution

Engineering & runtime environment

• Modelling of control and evolution control

Engineering & runtime environment

• Modelling of control and evolution control
1. Acquire existing application
2. Application Modelling
3. Evolution Engineering
4. Execution of System Evolution

Engineering & runtime environment

• Execution environment for control and evolution control applications

Demonstration prototype

Summary and conclusions

• A new engineering method and its execution for controlled evolution of IACSs was presented using embedded systems technology
• Methods for a system evolution from an actual system state to a new system state for IACSs were developed
• The approach is based on the reference model of IEC 61499
• A new execution environment based on IEC 61499 has been proposed as basis for the system evolution
• First test showed that basic services are suitable for supporting reconfiguration at lower control levels

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the FIT-IT: Embedded System program, an initiative of the Austrian federal inistry of transport, innovation, and technology(bm:vit).