Generation of the Orchestrator Code for Skill-Based Automation Systems

Kirill Dorofeev, Sebastian Bergemann, Tarik Terzimehić, Julian Grothoff, Michael Thies and Alois Zoitl

IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies And Factory Automation (ETFA),

September 2021 · doi: 10.1109/ETFA45728.2021.9613728

abstract

Engineering distributed control systems is a complex task, where the complexity and, thus, costs of the software development are growing rapidly. To keep the software complexity at an acceptable level and save time for development and subsequent maintenance, new solutions are sorely needed. In this paper, we investigate the advantages of using skills - universal control device interfaces - for generating complex logic in distributed control environments. By enriching a skill interface with the information about the dynamic behavior of a component under control, we compose the functionalities of individual control devices. The logic, required for such composition, is automatically derived from the interface description and the production plan, identifying the required skill sequence. The evaluation, executed using two industrial demonstrators, shows that the approach successfully handles different behavioral models and is capable of generating fault-tolerant orchestrators, including error handling scenarios. Overall, for developing a complex logic in a distributed skill-based automation system, the proposed approach shows significant savings in development time allowing to automate the skill composition task.

subject terms: Industry 4.0, skills, service-oriented architecture, IEC 61499, service composition, orchestration, PLC code generation, BaSys, Model-based Systems Engineering, MbSE