Development of distributed industrial control applications: the CORFU framework (original) (raw)

Towards Increased Flexibility and Interoperability in Distributed Process Control Applications

2020 IEEE Conference on Industrial Cyberphysical Systems (ICPS)

The modern process automation plants are changing into flexible designs, which raises the requirements for distributively controlled logic, a high degree of interoperability, dynamic reconfiguration and software reusability. Thus, creating an opportunity to integrate the distributed control system standards and platform independent communication protocols. In this paper, we propose the use of OPC UA to increase interoperability of communication and the utilization of Arrowhead Framework to enhance interoperable service compositions of control applications implemented in IEC 61499. The concept is outlined for the integration and modeling of a distributed control system for a FESTO laboratory batch process system. A control application example is provided to create distributed control of Cyber-Physical Systems using services that are connected using IEC 61499 in accordance to Industry 4.0 for improved interoperability and flexibility.

AN OBJECT ORIENTED FRAMEWORK FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF DISTRIBUTED CONTROL APPLICATIONS

ABSTRACT Software industry increasingly faces today the challenge of creating complex custom-made Industrial Process Measurement and Control System (IPMCS) applications within time and budget, while high competition forces prices down. A lot of proprietary solutions address the engineering process, and evolving standards exploit the function block construct as the main building block for the development of IPMCSs.

AN OO FRAMEWORK FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF DISTRIBUTED CONTROL APPLICATIONS

Software industry increasingly faces today the challenge of creating complex custom-made Industrial Process Measurement and Control System (IPMCS) applications within time and budget, while high competition forces prices down. A lot of proprietary solutions address the engineering process, and evolving standards exploit the function block construct as the main building block for the development of IPMCSs. However existing approaches are procedural-like and they do not exploit the maximum benefits introduced ...

Using UML for the development of distributed industrial process measurement and control systems

… , 2001.(CCA'01). Proceedings of the 2001 …, 2001

Software industry increasingly faces today the challenge of creating complex custom-made Industrial Process Measurement and Control Systems (IPMCSs) within time and budget, while high competition forces prices down. A lot of proprietary solutions address the engineering process and evolving standards exploit the function block construct as the main building block for the development of IPMCSs. However, existing approaches are procedural-like and they do not exploit the maximum benefits introduced by the object technology. In the context of this work, new technologies in Software Engineering as well as modern CASE tools, which assist to improve the efficiency of software development process, are considered. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) was adopted for the definition of a notation to assist in the design and development of open distributed IPMCSs. The proposed notation constitutes the heart of our object-oriented framework that attempts to improve the engineering process in terms of reliability, development time and degree of automation.

Unicos a Framework to Buil D Industry Like Control Systems: Principles & Methodology

2005

UNICOS is a CERN framework developed to produce control applications for three-layer industrial control systems (Fig. 1). UNICOS provides developers with means to develop full control applications and operators with ways to interact with all items of the process from the most simple (e.g. I/O channels) to the high level compounded objects (e.g. a sub part of the plant). In addition UNICOS offers tools to diagnose the process and the control system. UNICOS proposes a method to design and develop the control applications. This method is based on the modelling of the process in a hierarchy of objects (I/Os, actual devices and more abstract control objects). These objects are used as a common language by process engineers and programmers to define the functional analysis of the process. In addition to the method, tools have been produced to automate the instantiation of the objects in the supervision and process control layers and generate skeletons of the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) programs. The control code production associated to this methodology is generally data-driven and for some projects a model driven software production has been implemented.

A Tool Integration Framework for Industrial Distributed Control Systems

2006

This paper presents a tool integration approach for supporting the development cycle of industrial distributed control applications. The core of the approach is a formal model of the application that expresses separately the functionality of the control system from the implementation issues. The modeling language selected is XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and the framework proposed makes use of XML technologies for achieving the integration of the tools involved within the development cycle. Following this approach, a set of tools from different domain of expertise (control engineering, software engineering, configuration, maintenance…) have been integrated into a framework. The toolset has been used for designing and validating the distributed control system of a heat treatment line.

PCT: Component-based Process Control Testbed

Proceedings of the 44th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 2005

In the last years industrial control systems have increased their complexity, using a great variety of hardware and software elements of all kinds. In larger systems a big number of different protocols, communication networks and architectures can be found. System components are not centralized but distributed over the plant and they communicate with each other through several channels. Industrial control systems are usually organized in layers, and information used within/among them needs to be integrated. The general trend is to develop heterogeneous and distributed control systems, where system integration is a hard issue. CORBA is an open standard that provides a flexible middleware capable of integrating complex applications in heterogeneous environments, and could be a good choice when developing a control system. Nevertheless, CORBA has some limitations regarding to hard real-time applications, so it is only suitable for developing soft real-time systems. This paper describes the Process Control Testbed (PCT) of the IST Hard Real-time CORBA project (HRTC), which has been used to analyze and evaluate CORBA advantages and disadvantages in distributed real-time control systems development. The PCT system has been designed and implemented using CORBA and RTCORBA. A new version is being implemented using CCM Technology in the IST COMPARE project.

Free and Open Source Software for Industrial Process Control Systems

Scilab and Scicos are open-source and free software packages for design, simulation and realization of industrial process control systems. They can be used as the center of an integrated platform for the complete development process, including running controller with real plant (Scicos-HIL: Hardware In the Loop) and automatic code generation for real time embedded platforms (Linux, RTAI/RTAI-Lab, RTAI-XML/J-RTAI-Lab). These tools are mature, working alternatives to closed source, proprietary solutions for educational, academic, research and industrial applications. We present, using a working example, a complete development chain, from the design tools to the automatic code generation of stand alone embedded control and user interface program.

Formal Modelling of Industrial Distributed Control Systems

IFAC Proceedings Volumes, 2005

Industrial Process Measurement and Control Systems (IPMCS) are used in most of the industrial sectors to achieve production improvement, process optimisation and time and cost reduction. Integration, reuse, flexibility and optimisation are demanded to adapt to a rapidly changing and competitive market. There is also a growing requirement that all software tools that support the different phases of the development process (design, configuration, management) can be integrated as well. Thus, a consolidation of modelling methodologies for achieving this goal is needed. This paper presents a formal modelling for IPMCS that captures all aspects of the system to design in terms of functionality and implementation (hardware and software). The modelling language (eXtensible Markup Language, XML) allow to implement model validation as well as to easily transform information coming from / going to different software tools, achieving tool integration.

DICOS: a real-time distributed industrial control system for embedded applications

Control Engineering Practice, 2001

The Fault Tolerant Systems Group of the Technical University of Valencia has developed the DICOS system. This paper describes DICOS (Distributed Industrial COntrol System) nodes. The architecture of DICOS nodes and the error detection mechanisms used are presented. These mechanisms are based on the internal capabilities of the 16-bit microcontroller used and control flow checking and deadlines control with the aid ofa second 8-bitmicrocontroller.