Interoperability middleware for IIoT gateways based on international standard ontologies and standardized digital representation

Recent advances in the areas of microelectronics, information technology, and communication protocols have made the development of smaller devices with greater processing capacity and lower energy consumption. This context contributed to the growing number of physical devices in industrial environments which are interconnected and communicate via the internet, enabling concepts such as Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). These nodes have different sensors and actuators that monitor and control environment data. Several companies develop these devices, including diverse communication protocols, data structures, and IoT platforms, which leads to interoperability issues. In IoT scenarios, interoperability is the ability of two systems to communicate and share services. Therefore, communication problems can make it unfeasible to use heterogeneous devices, increasing the project’s financial cost and development time. In an industry, interoperability is related to different aspects, such as physical communication, divergent device communication protocols, and syntactical problems, referring to the distinct data structure. Developing a new standard for solving these matters may bring interoperability-related drawbacks rather than effectively solving these issues. Therefore, to mitigate interoperability problems in industrial applications, this work proposes the development of an interoperability middleware for Edge-enabled IIoT gateways based on international standards. The middleware is responsible for translating communication protocols, updating data from simulations or physical nodes to the assets’ digital representations, and storing data locally or remotely. The middleware adopts the IEEE industrial standard ontologies combined with assets’ standardized digital models. As a case study, a simulation replicates the production of a nutrient solution for agriculture, controlled by IIoT nodes. The use case consists of three devices, each equipped with at least five sensors or actuators, communicating in different communication protocols and exchanging data using diverse structures. The performance of the proposed middleware and its proposed translations algorithms were evaluated, obtaining satisfactory results for mitigating interoperable in industrial applications.Devido a recentes avanços nas áreas de microeletrônica, tecnologia da informação, e protocolos de comunicação tornaram possível o desenvolvimento de dispositivos cada vez menores com maior capacidade de processamento e menor consumo energético. Esse contexto contribuiu para o crescente nú- mero desses dispositivos na industria que estão interligados via internet, viabilizando conceitos como Indústria 4.0 e Internet das Coisas Industrial (IIoT). Esses nós possuem diferentes sensores e atuadores que monitoram e controlam os dados do ambiente. Esses equipamentos são desenvolvidos por diferentes empresas, incluindo protocolos de comunicação, estruturas de dados e plataformas de IoT distintos, acarretando em problemas de interoperabilidade. Em cenários de IoT, interoperabilidade, é a capacidade de sistemas se comunicarem e compartilharem serviços. Portanto, esses problemas podem inviabilizar o uso de dispositivos heterogêneos, aumentando o custo financeiro do projeto e seu tempo de desenvolvimento. Na indústria, interoperabilidade se divide em diferentes aspectos, como comunicação e problemas sintáticos, referentes à estrutura de dados distinta. O desenvolvimento de um padrão industrial pode trazer mais desvantagens relacionadas à interoperabilidade, em vez de resolver esses problemas. Portanto, para mitigar problemas relacionados a intoperabilidade industrial, este trabalho propõe o desenvolvimento de um middleware de interoperável para gateways IIoT baseado em padrões internacionais e ontologias. O middleware é responsável por traduzir diferentes protocolos de comunicação, atualizar os dados dos ativos industriais por meio de suas representações digitais, esses armazenados localmente ou remotamente. O middleware adota os padrões ontológicos industriais da IEEE combinadas com modelos digitais padronizados de ativos industriais. Como estudo de caso, são realizadas simulações para a produção de uma solução nutritiva para agricultura, controlada por nós IIoT. O processo utiliza três dispositivos, cada um equipado com pelo menos cinco sensores ou atuadores, por meio de diferentes protocolos de comunicação e estruturas de dados. O desempenho do middleware proposto e seus algoritmos de tradução foram avaliados e apresentados no final do trabalho, os quais resultados foram satisfatórios para mitigar a interoperabilidade em aplicações industriais

Design and implementation of a holistic framework for data integration in industrial machine and sensor networks

Digitalization and connectivity trends in industrial plants and production equipment create vast and heterogeneous networks of data sources, data sinks and various communication protocols. Data fusion and evaluation of these resources result in high costs for data integration and maintenance. Therefore, we propose a new framework, called MyGateway, enabling effortless integration of heterogeneous data sources, their fusion within the framework and publication to data sinks as needed. For easy integration, deployment, and expansion of the framework we provide an implementation in JAVA using open-source adapters for common industrial protocols and a simple API for usage in user specified setups

Semantic Driven Approach for Rapid Application Development in Industrial Internet of Things

The evolution of IoT has revolutionized industrial automation. Industrial devices at every level such as field devices, control devices, enterprise level devices etc., are connected to the Internet, where they can be accessed easily. It has significantly changed the way applications are developed on the industrial automation systems. It led to the paradigm shift where novel IoT application development tools such as Node-RED can be used to develop complex industrial applications as IoT orchestrations. However, in the current state, these applications are bound strictly to devices from specific vendors and ecosystems. They cannot be re-used with devices from other vendors and platforms, since the applications are not semantically interoperable. For this purpose, it is desirable to use platform-independent, vendor-neutral application templates for common automation tasks. However, in the current state in Node-RED such reusable and interoperable application templates cannot be developed. The interoperability problem at the data level can be addressed in IoT, using Semantic Web (SW) technologies. However, for an industrial engineer or an IoT application developer, SW technologies are not very easy to use. In order to enable efficient use of SW technologies to create interoperable IoT applications, novel IoT tools are required. For this purpose, in this paper we propose a novel semantic extension to the widely used Node-RED tool by introducing semantic definitions such as iot.schema.org semantic models into Node-RED. The tool guides a non-expert in semantic technologies such as a device vendor, a machine builder to configure the semantics of a device consistently. Moreover, it also enables an engineer, IoT application developer to design and develop semantically interoperable IoT applications with minimal effort. Our approach accelerates the application development process by introducing novel semantic application templates called Recipes in Node-RED. Using Recipes, complex application development tasks such as skill matching between Recipes and existing things can be automated.We will present the approach to perform automated skill matching on the Cloud or on the Edge of an automation system. We performed quantitative and qualitative evaluation of our approach to test the feasibility and scalability of the approach in real world scenarios. The results of the evaluation are presented and discussed in the paper.Die Entwicklung des Internet der Dinge (IoT) hat die industrielle Automatisierung revolutioniert. Industrielle Geräte auf allen Ebenen wie Feldgeräte, Steuergeräte, Geräte auf Unternehmensebene usw. sind mit dem Internet verbunden, wodurch problemlos auf sie zugegriffen werden kann. Es hat die Art und Weise, wie Anwendungen auf industriellen Automatisierungssystemen entwickelt werden, deutlich verändert. Es führte zum Paradigmenwechsel, wo neuartige IoT Anwendungsentwicklungstools, wie Node-RED, verwendet werden können, um komplexe industrielle Anwendungen als IoT-Orchestrierungen zu entwickeln. Aktuell sind diese Anwendungen jedoch ausschließlich an Geräte bestimmter Anbieter und Ökosysteme gebunden. Sie können nicht mit Geräten anderer Anbieter und Plattformen verbunden werden, da die Anwendungen nicht semantisch interoperabel sind. Daher ist es wünschenswert, plattformunabhängige, herstellerneutrale Anwendungsvorlagen für allgemeine Automatisierungsaufgaben zu verwenden. Im aktuellen Status von Node-RED können solche wiederverwendbaren und interoperablen Anwendungsvorlagen jedoch nicht entwickelt werden. Diese Interoperabilitätsprobleme auf Datenebene können im IoT mithilfe von Semantic Web (SW) -Technologien behoben werden. Für Ingenieure oder Entwickler von IoT-Anwendungen sind SW-Technologien nicht sehr einfach zu verwenden. Zur Erstellung interoperabler IoT-Anwendungen sind daher neuartige IoT-Tools erforderlich. Zu diesem Zweck schlagen wir eine neuartige semantische Erweiterung des weit verbreiteten Node-RED-Tools vor, indem wir semantische Definitionen wie iot.schema.org in die semantischen Modelle von NODE-Red einführen. Das Tool leitet einen Gerätehersteller oder Maschinebauer, die keine Experten in semantische Technologien sind, an um die Semantik eines Geräts konsistent zu konfigurieren. Darüber hinaus ermöglicht es auch einem Ingenieur oder IoT-Anwendungsentwickler, semantische, interoperable IoT-Anwendungen mit minimalem Aufwand zu entwerfen und entwicklen Unser Ansatz beschleunigt die Anwendungsentwicklungsprozesse durch Einführung neuartiger semantischer Anwendungsvorlagen namens Rezepte für Node-RED. Durch die Verwendung von Rezepten können komplexe Anwendungsentwicklungsaufgaben wie das Abgleichen von Funktionen zwischen Rezepten und vorhandenen Strukturen automatisiert werden. Wir demonstrieren Skill-Matching in der Cloud oder am Industrial Edge eines Automatisierungssystems. Wir haben dafür quantitative und qualitative Bewertung unseres Ansatzes durchgeführt, um die Machbarkeit und Skalierbarkeit des Ansatzes in realen Szenarien zu testen. Die Ergebnisse der Bewertung werden in dieser Arbeit vorgestellt und diskutiert

Digital Twins for an Industrial Internet of Things Platform

Com o avanço da Indústria 4.0 e do surgimento de novas tecnologias de informação e comunicação tais como o IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things), o sector industrial tem procurado cada vez mais, evoluir as suas linhas de produção de modo a atingir a maior eficiência de produção possível. Aliado ao conceito IIoT, o termo Digital Twin e CPS (Cyber Physical System) começam a ganhar elevada relevância em vários sectores, nomeadamente no sector industrial. Apesar de serem conceitos que se podem confundir, o conceito de DT e CPS são aplicados em diferentes domínios. O conceito de CPS relaciona-se com a conexão de duas direções que é possível estabelecer entre o meio físico e o meio digital. Ele utiliza a rede IoT para capturar a informação do meio físico através de sensores e controladores e com esta informação, é possível no meio digital tornar a réplica mais inteligente a fim de conseguir reproduzir o comportamento da entidade física. O conceito de DT é um pouco menos abstrato, comparado com o conceito de CPS, e é o DT que implementa o CPS. O DT utiliza as funcionalidades do CPS para realizar modelos de simulação das entidades físicas de forma a conseguir espelhar a geometria e o comportamento da mesma no meio digital. Com estes modelos digitais é possível realizar uma monitorização e controlo em tempo real das entidades físicas. De forma a aplicar estes conceitos, esta dissertação tem como principal objetivo a implementação de um DT capaz de replicar o comportamento de uma determinada entidade física no meio digital. Dessa forma, através da aplicação web Jurassic Park como plataforma IoT, a dissertação pretende adicionar um conjunto de novas funcionalidades de controlo e monitorização à sua interface-gráfica, de modo a que o utilizador consiga não só observar em tempo real a variação de valores de variáveis previamente subscritas mas também controlar alguns eventos que também foram selecionados pelo utilizador previamente

OPC UA integration through connect bridge platform

Ao longo das últimas décadas, o problema da integração de software tem representado um enorme desafio para as empresas devido aos elevados custos que lhe estão associados. Na década de 90, de modo a maximizar o seu lucro, os produtores de máquinas industriais dificultavam a comunicação entre máquinas de diferentes fabricantes, forçando assim a que fabricas tivessem de comprar todas as suas máquinas a um único fabricante. O padrão OPC surgiu nesta década e levou a que este problema fosse minimizado. Mais tarde, este standard foi atualizado, originando o OPC UA. Hoje vivemos a quarta revolução industrial e o OPC UA é considerado como o standard de facto para a mesma. A Connecting Software é uma empresa que se especializou no desenvolvimento de soluções de integração e através da sua plataforma, o Connect Bridge, simplificam as API de sistemas complexos com recurso a linguagem SQL. O Connect Bridge conta com uma arquitetura de plugins1 onde cada plugin que lhe é acoplado permite que este comunique com um sistema diferente. Assim, de modo a permitir que este comunique com sistemas baseados em OPC UA é necessário desenvolver um plugin1. Esta dissertação propõe a implementação deste plugin. Para construir o produto proposto, foi necessário: Compreender o padrão OPC UA e criar todos os requisitos para o sistema; Mapear o padrão OPC UA em SQL; Construir testes de integração; Além destes passos, houve a oportunidade de interação com um cliente. Esta colaboração permitiu refinar cenários e construir aplicações que serão utilizadas em futuras demonstrações do produto. O produto desenvolvido ao longo desta dissertação permitiu a entrada da Connecting Software num novo sector de mercado, o sector industrial, permitindo a integração de máquinas industriais que fazem do OPC UA Standard com outros sistemas suportados pela plataforma.Over the last decades, the problem of software integration has been a significant challenge for companies, due to high costs. In the 1990s, to maximize their profit, manufacturers of industrial machines created barriers to communication between machines from different manufacturers, forcing factories to buy all their machines from a single manufacturer. The OPC standard arose in this decade as a tentative to minimize this problem. Later, this standard was updated and OPC UA was born. Nowadays, we are living the fourth industrial revolution and OPC UA is considered as the de-facto standard for it. Connecting Software is a company specialized in the development of integration solutions. Through Connect Bridge, their integration platform, SQL is used to simplify complex system APIs. Connect Bridge uses a plugin architecture, where each plugin2 that is attached to it is used to allow the communication with a different system. This dissertation proposes a new connector used to allow Connect Bridge Platform to communicate with OPC UA systems. To achieve this result, it was necessary to: Understand the OPC UA Standard and create requirements; Map the OPC UA Standard into SQL; Implement the OPC UA Connector; Produce integration Tests. The integration tests allowed us to increase the overall value of the product, minimizing the occurrence of potential failures. During the development of this solution, there was the opportunity to interact with a friendly customer. This collaboration allowed us to create scenarios and develop simple demos which would be used to present to future customers. This product allowed Connecting Software to enter in a new market area, facilitating the integration of business-oriented systems (e.g. SharePoint, Exchange or others) with industrial systems based on OPC UA

Smart industrial IoT monitoring and control system based on UAV and cloud computing applied to a concrete plant

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are now considered one of the best remote sensing techniques for gathering data over large areas. They are now being used in the industry sector as sensing tools for proactively solving or preventing many issues, besides quantifying production and helping to make decisions. UAVs are a highly consistent technological platform for efficient and cost-effective data collection and event monitoring. The industrial Internet of things (IIoT) sends data from systems that monitor and control the physical world to data processing systems that cloud computing has shown to be important tools for meeting processing requirements. In fog computing, the IoT gateway links different objects to the internet. It can operate as a joint interface for different networks and support different communication protocols. A great deal of effort has been put into developing UAVs and multi-UAV systems. This paper introduces a smart IIoT monitoring and control system based on an unmanned aerial vehicle that uses cloud computing services and exploits fog computing as the bridge between IIoT layers. Its novelty lies in the fact that the UAV is automatically integrated into an industrial control system through an IoT gateway platform, while UAV photos are systematically and instantly computed and analyzed in the cloud. Visual supervision of the plant by drones and cloud services is integrated in real-time into the control loop of the industrial control system. As a proof of concept, the platform was used in a case study in an industrial concrete plant. The results obtained clearly illustrate the feasibility of the proposed platform in providing a reliable and efficient system for UAV remote control to improve product quality and reduce waste. For this, we studied the communication latency between the different IIoT layers in different IoT gateways.The authors would like to thank the Seneca Foundation as also FRUMECAR S.L., for their support and the opportunity to implement and test the proposed approach on their facilities. This work was partially supported by FRUMECAR S.L. and Seneca Foundation's "Murcia Regional Scientific Excellence Research Program" (Murcia Science and Technology Agency-19895/GERM/15)

An OSGi-based production process monitoring system for SMEs

The present paper proposes an architecture for a product process monitoring system suitable for SMEs (Small-Medium Enterprises). The monitoring system is the main means by which decision-making systems based on intelligent automation technologies are aware of the state of the system on which they will take decisions. Methods and tools from best-practice and best-effort approaches are proposed in the context of SMEs, where the requirements of low cost, low initial level of digitisation and high production flexibility often coexist and contribute to the complexity of management and control problems in these companies. The paper focuses on the design of the monitoring system using an OSGi framework to meet industry standards and Industry 4.0 requirements, taking into account the peculiarities of SMEs as design constraints. The proposed architecture was first tested using a simulation tool and then implemented on a full-scale production line used for data collection

Automatic Configuration of OPC UA for Industrial Internet of Things Environments

This work has been funded partially by the Software Engineering Department of the University of Granada.We would like to acknowledge the participation of Dzmitry Basalai in this research paper for his helping in the elaboration of the prototype carried out in this workSoftware technologies play an increasingly significant role in industrial environments, especially for the adoption of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). In this context, the application of mechanisms for the auto-configuration of industrial systems may be relevant for reducing human errors and costs in terms of time and money, improving the maintenance and the quality control. OPC UA (OLE for Process Control Unified Architecture) systems are usually integrated into an industrial system to provide a standard way for setting a secure and reliable data exchange between industrial devices of multiple vendors and software systems. In this paper, a novel mechanism for the auto-configuration of OPC UA systems is proposed from an initial setup of industrial devices interconnected to a basic Ethernet network. The auto-configuration of the OPC UA is self-managed over the TCP/IP protocol. This mechanism allows automating the configuration process of the OPC UA server automatically from the programmable logic controller (PLC) devices connected to a basic Ethernet network. Once the PLC devices are identified, they exchange information directly with OPC using a Modbus protocol over the same Ethernet network. To test the feasibility of this approach, a case study is prepared and evaluated