Title: Rapid engineering and re-configuration of automation objects aided by formal modelling and verification

Authors: Valeriy Vyatkin, Hans-Michael Hanisch, Sirko Karras, Thomas Pfeiffer, Victor Dubinin

Addresses: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. ' Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Department of Informatics, Halle, Germany. ' Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Department of Informatics, Halle, Germany. ' Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Department of Informatics, Halle, Germany. ' The University of Penza, Department of Computer Science, Penza, Russia

Abstract: This paper is about the engineering of the information processing and control part of intelligent manufacturing systems. A number of recently developed technologies can bring qualitative benefits to the users and vendors of such systems. In particular, component distributed architectures (IEC 61499), mechatronic ontologies, object-oriented design methods (UML) and formal verification, if properly combined, can provide real plug and play of intelligent machines, and thus drastically improve the flexibility of manufacturing systems. The paper surveys important relevant works in the area of intelligent automation and presents new ideas on object-oriented development of automation systems. The ideas presented in this paper reflect current progress of the ongoing R&D project VAIAS, |Validatable Architectures for Industrial Automation Systems|.

Keywords: automation objects; distributed control; IEC 61499; verification; rapid engineering; object re-configuration; formal modelling; intelligent manufacturing systems; IMS; information processing; mechatronic ontologies; object-oriented design; manufacturing flexibility; flexible manufacturing; intelligent automation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMR.2006.012252

International Journal of Manufacturing Research, 2006 Vol.1 No.4, pp.382 - 404

Published online: 31 Jan 2007 *

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