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

BotSpine - A Generic Simple Development Platform of Smartphones and Sensors or Robotics

The Internet of Things (IoT) emergence leads to an “intelligence” technology revolution in industrial, social, environmental and almost every aspect of life and objectives. Sensor and actuators are heavily employed in industrial production and, under the trend of IoT, smart sensors are in great demand. Smartphones stand out from other computing terminals as a result of their incomparable popularity, mobility and computer comparable computing capability. However, current IoT designs are developed among diverse platforms and systems and are usually specific to applications and patterns. There is no a standardized developing interface between smartphones and sensors/electronics that is facile and rapid for either developers or consumers to connect and control through smartphones. The goal of this thesis is to develop a simple and generic platform interconnecting smartphones and sensors and/or robotics, allowing users to develop, monitor and control all types of sensors, robotics or customer electronics simply over their smartphones through the developed platform. The research is in cooperation with a local company, Environmental Instruments Canada Inc. From the perspective of research and industrial interests, the proposed platform is designed for generally applicable, low cost, low energy, easily programmed, and smartphone based sensor and/or robotic development purposes. I will build a platform interfacing smartphones and sensors including hardware, firmware structures and software application. The platform is named BotSpine and it provides an energy-efficient real-time wireless communication. This thesis also implements BotSpine by redesigning a radon sniffer robot with the developed interface, demonstrated that BotSpine is able to achieve expectations. BotSpine performs a fast and secure connection with smartphones and its command/BASIC program features render controlling and developing robotics and electronics easy and simple

DIN Spec 91345 RAMI 4.0 compliant data pipelining: An approach to support data understanding and data acquisition in smart manufacturing environments

Today, data scientists in the manufacturing domain are confronted with a set of challenges associated to data acquisition as well as data processing including the extraction of valuable in-formation to support both, the work of the manufacturing equipment as well as the manufacturing processes behind it. One essential aspect related to data acquisition is the pipelining, including various commu-nication standards, protocols and technologies to save and transfer heterogenous data. These circumstances make it hard to understand, find, access and extract data from the sources depend-ing on use cases and applications. In order to support this data pipelining process, this thesis proposes the use of the semantic model. The selected semantic model should be able to describe smart manufacturing assets them-selves as well as to access their data along their life-cycle. As a matter of fact, there are many research contributions in smart manufacturing, which already came out with reference architectures or standards for semantic-based meta data descrip-tion or asset classification. This research builds upon these outcomes and introduces a novel se-mantic model-based data pipelining approach using as a basis the Reference Architecture Model for Industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0).Hoje em dia, os cientistas de dados no domínio da manufatura são confrontados com várias normas, protocolos e tecnologias de comunicação para gravar, processar e transferir vários tipos de dados. Estas circunstâncias tornam difícil compreender, encontrar, aceder e extrair dados necessários para aplicações dependentes de casos de utilização, desde os equipamentos aos respectivos processos de manufatura. Um aspecto essencial poderia ser um processo de canalisação de dados incluindo vários normas de comunicação, protocolos e tecnologias para gravar e transferir dados. Uma solução para suporte deste processo, proposto por esta tese, é a aplicação de um modelo semântico que descreva os próprios recursos de manufactura inteligente e o acesso aos seus dados ao longo do seu ciclo de vida. Muitas das contribuições de investigação em manufatura inteligente já produziram arquitecturas de referência como a RAMI 4.0 ou normas para a descrição semântica de meta dados ou classificação de recursos. Esta investigação baseia-se nestas fontes externas e introduz um novo modelo semântico baseado no Modelo de Arquitectura de Referência para Indústria 4.0 (RAMI 4.0), em conformidade com a abordagem de canalisação de dados no domínio da produção inteligente como caso exemplar de utilização para permitir uma fácil exploração, compreensão, descoberta, selecção e extracção de dados

Designing Data Spaces

This open access book provides a comprehensive view on data ecosystems and platform economics from methodical and technological foundations up to reports from practical implementations and applications in various industries. To this end, the book is structured in four parts: Part I “Foundations and Contexts” provides a general overview about building, running, and governing data spaces and an introduction to the IDS and GAIA-X projects. Part II “Data Space Technologies” subsequently details various implementation aspects of IDS and GAIA-X, including eg data usage control, the usage of blockchain technologies, or semantic data integration and interoperability. Next, Part III describes various “Use Cases and Data Ecosystems” from various application areas such as agriculture, healthcare, industry, energy, and mobility. Part IV eventually offers an overview of several “Solutions and Applications”, eg including products and experiences from companies like Google, SAP, Huawei, T-Systems, Innopay and many more. Overall, the book provides professionals in industry with an encompassing overview of the technological and economic aspects of data spaces, based on the International Data Spaces and Gaia-X initiatives. It presents implementations and business cases and gives an outlook to future developments. In doing so, it aims at proliferating the vision of a social data market economy based on data spaces which embrace trust and data sovereignty

Smart system signalization prototype for flow control of people in crosswalks

Mestrado de dupla diplomação com a UTFPR - Universidade Tecnológica Federal do ParanáBad lighting conditions on crosswalks is a common problem on the urban environment. This scenery entail a large number of pedestrians fatalities and it shows a demand for solutions able to ensure their safety using lighting resources. The present work proposes a crosswalk’s crossing process oriented by a system which is compound for a pair of Smart Devices that fit themselves in the Smart City idea. Inside this propose, they are capable to signalize for pedestrians the safe moment to enter on the crosswalk. These devices are a prototype of a system programmed in Python language and based in the Raspberry Pi and LoRa technologies. The work is split, mainly, on the hardware and software components development. In hardware level, it shows a circuit schematic design based on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module operating with the RFM95W LoRa module. In software level, it shows the incremental development of a Embedded System which reads inputs, gives lighting outputs and implements the communication, with encrypted messages, between the devices. Finally, this thesis shows a circuit schematic implementation wiled in KiCAD software and a embedded system focused in ensure well lighting and signalization on crosswalks. To validate the system are made hypothetical tests toward pedestrians behavior to cross the street on crosswalks.As más condições de iluminação em passadeiras são um problema recorrente no ambiente urbano. Esse cenário implica em um grande número de fatalidades e deixa evidente a demanda por uma solução capaz de garantir a segurança do pedestre usando recursos de iluminação. O presente trabalho propõe um processo de travessia em faixas de pedestres orientado por um sistema composto por um par de dipositivos inteligentes que se encaixam na ideia de cidades inteligentes. Dentro dessa proposta, eles são capazes de sinalizar para os pedestres o momento seguro para entrar na passadeira. Esses dispositivos são um protótipo de sistema programado em linguagem Python e baseado nas tecnologias Raspberry Pi e LoRa. O trabalho é dividido, principalmente, no desenvolvimento das componentes de hardware e software. A nível de hardware, ele mostra um projeto esquemático do circuito baseado no Raspberry Pi Compute Module que opera com o módulo LoRa RFM95W. A nível de software, ele mostra o desenvolvimento incremental de um sistema incorporado que lê entradas, fornece saídas de iluminação e implementa a comunicação, com mensagens criptografadas, entre os dispositivos. Finalmente, esta tese mostra a implementação do esquemático de um circuito usando o software KiCAD e um sistema embarcado focado em garantir iluminação e a sinalização nas passadeiras. Para validar o sistema são feitos testes hipotéticos em relação ao comportamento dos pedestres para atravessar a rua em faixas de pedestres

Cloud robotic architectures: directions for future research from a comparative analysis

Advances in robotics and cloud computing have led to the emergence of cloud robotics where robots can benefit from remote processing, greater memory and computational power, and massive data storage. The integration of robotics and cloud computing has often been regarded as a complex aspect due to the various components involved in such systems. In order to address this issue, different studies have attempted to create cloud robotic architectures to simplify representation into different blocks or components. However, limited study has been undertaken to critically review and compare these architectures. As such, this paper investigates and performs a comparative analysis of existing cloud robotic architectures in order to identify key limitations and recommend on the future of cloud robotic architectures. As part of this study, 7 such architectures have been reviewed and compared and results showed limited evaluation of existing architectures in favour of security weaknesses