60 research outputs found

    Machine Tool Communication (MTComm) Method and Its Applications in a Cyber-Physical Manufacturing Cloud

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    The integration of cyber-physical systems and cloud manufacturing has the potential to revolutionize existing manufacturing systems by enabling better accessibility, agility, and efficiency. To achieve this, it is necessary to establish a communication method of manufacturing services over the Internet to access and manage physical machines from cloud applications. Most of the existing industrial automation protocols utilize Ethernet based Local Area Network (LAN) and are not designed specifically for Internet enabled data transmission. Recently MTConnect has been gaining popularity as a standard for monitoring status of machine tools through RESTful web services and an XML based messaging structure, but it is only designed for data collection and interpretation and lacks remote operation capability. This dissertation presents the design, development, optimization, and applications of a service-oriented Internet-scale communication method named Machine Tool Communication (MTComm) for exchanging manufacturing services in a Cyber-Physical Manufacturing Cloud (CPMC) to enable manufacturing with heterogeneous physically connected machine tools from geographically distributed locations over the Internet. MTComm uses an agent-adapter based architecture and a semantic ontology to provide both remote monitoring and operation capabilities through RESTful services and XML messages. MTComm was successfully used to develop and implement multi-purpose applications in in a CPMC including remote and collaborative manufacturing, active testing-based and edge-based fault diagnosis and maintenance of machine tools, cross-domain interoperability between Internet-of-things (IoT) devices and supply chain robots etc. To improve MTComm’s overall performance, efficiency, and acceptability in cyber manufacturing, the concept of MTComm’s edge-based middleware was introduced and three optimization strategies for data catching, transmission, and operation execution were developed and adopted at the edge. Finally, a hardware prototype of the middleware was implemented on a System-On-Chip based FPGA device to reduce computational and transmission latency. At every stage of its development, MTComm’s performance and feasibility were evaluated with experiments in a CPMC testbed with three different types of manufacturing machine tools. Experimental results demonstrated MTComm’s excellent feasibility for scalable cyber-physical manufacturing and superior performance over other existing approaches

    Machine Tool Communication (MTComm) Method and Its Applications in a Cyber-Physical Manufacturing Cloud

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    The integration of cyber-physical systems and cloud manufacturing has the potential to revolutionize existing manufacturing systems by enabling better accessibility, agility, and efficiency. To achieve this, it is necessary to establish a communication method of manufacturing services over the Internet to access and manage physical machines from cloud applications. Most of the existing industrial automation protocols utilize Ethernet based Local Area Network (LAN) and are not designed specifically for Internet enabled data transmission. Recently MTConnect has been gaining popularity as a standard for monitoring status of machine tools through RESTful web services and an XML based messaging structure, but it is only designed for data collection and interpretation and lacks remote operation capability. This dissertation presents the design, development, optimization, and applications of a service-oriented Internet-scale communication method named Machine Tool Communication (MTComm) for exchanging manufacturing services in a Cyber-Physical Manufacturing Cloud (CPMC) to enable manufacturing with heterogeneous physically connected machine tools from geographically distributed locations over the Internet. MTComm uses an agent-adapter based architecture and a semantic ontology to provide both remote monitoring and operation capabilities through RESTful services and XML messages. MTComm was successfully used to develop and implement multi-purpose applications in in a CPMC including remote and collaborative manufacturing, active testing-based and edge-based fault diagnosis and maintenance of machine tools, cross-domain interoperability between Internet-of-things (IoT) devices and supply chain robots etc. To improve MTComm’s overall performance, efficiency, and acceptability in cyber manufacturing, the concept of MTComm’s edge-based middleware was introduced and three optimization strategies for data catching, transmission, and operation execution were developed and adopted at the edge. Finally, a hardware prototype of the middleware was implemented on a System-On-Chip based FPGA device to reduce computational and transmission latency. At every stage of its development, MTComm’s performance and feasibility were evaluated with experiments in a CPMC testbed with three different types of manufacturing machine tools. Experimental results demonstrated MTComm’s excellent feasibility for scalable cyber-physical manufacturing and superior performance over other existing approaches

    Smart Agents in Industrial Cyber–Physical Systems

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    NFV orchestration in edge and fog scenarios

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    Mención Internacional en el título de doctorLas infraestructuras de red actuales soportan una variedad diversa de servicios como video bajo demanda, video conferencias, redes sociales, sistemas de educación, o servicios de almacenamiento de fotografías. Gran parte de la población mundial ha comenzado a utilizar estos servicios, y los utilizan diariamente. Proveedores de Cloud y operadores de infraestructuras de red albergan el tráfico de red generado por estos servicios, y sus tareas de gestión no solo implican realizar el enrutamiento del tráfico, sino también el procesado del tráfico de servicios de red. Tradicionalmente, el procesado del tráfico ha sido realizado mediante aplicaciones/ programas desplegados en servidores que estaban dedicados en exclusiva a tareas concretas como la inspección de paquetes. Sin embargo, en los últimos anos los servicios de red se han virtualizado y esto ha dado lugar al paradigma de virtualización de funciones de red (Network Function Virtualization (NFV) siguiendo las siglas en ingles), en el que las funciones de red de un servicio se ejecutan en contenedores o máquinas virtuales desacopladas de la infraestructura hardware. Como resultado, el procesado de tráfico se ha ido haciendo más flexible gracias al laxo acople del software y hardware, y a la posibilidad de compartir funciones de red típicas, como firewalls, entre los distintos servicios de red. NFV facilita la automatización de operaciones de red, ya que tareas como el escalado, o la migración son típicamente llevadas a cabo mediante un conjunto de comandos previamente definidos por la tecnología de virtualización pertinente, bien mediante contenedores o máquinas virtuales. De todos modos, sigue siendo necesario decidir el en rutamiento y procesado del tráfico de cada servicio de red. En otras palabras, que servidores tienen que encargarse del procesado del tráfico, y que enlaces de la red tienen que utilizarse para que las peticiones de los usuarios lleguen a los servidores finales, es decir, el conocido como embedding problem. Bajo el paraguas del paradigma NFV, a este problema se le conoce en inglés como Virtual Network Embedding (VNE), y esta tesis utiliza el termino “NFV orchestration algorithm” para referirse a los algoritmos que resuelven este problema. El problema del VNE es NP-hard, lo cual significa que que es imposible encontrar una solución optima en un tiempo polinómico, independientemente del tamaño de la red. Como consecuencia, la comunidad investigadora y de telecomunicaciones utilizan heurísticos que encuentran soluciones de manera más rápida que productos para la resolución de problemas de optimización. Tradicionalmente, los “NFV orchestration algorithms” han intentado minimizar los costes de despliegue derivados de las soluciones asociadas. Por ejemplo, estos algoritmos intentan no consumir el ancho de banda de la red, y usar rutas cortas para no utilizar tantos recursos. Además, una tendencia reciente ha llevado a la comunidad investigadora a utilizar algoritmos que minimizan el consumo energético de los servicios desplegados, bien mediante la elección de dispositivos con un consumo energético más eficiente, o mediante el apagado de dispositivos de red en desuso. Típicamente, las restricciones de los problemas de VNE se han resumido en un conjunto de restricciones asociadas al uso de recursos y consumo energético, y las soluciones se diferenciaban por la función objetivo utilizada. Pero eso era antes de la 5a generación de redes móviles (5G) se considerase en el problema de VNE. Con la aparición del 5G, nuevos servicios de red y casos de uso entraron en escena. Los estándares hablaban de comunicaciones ultra rápidas y fiables (Ultra-Reliable and Low Latency Communications (URLLC) usando las siglas en inglés) con latencias por debajo de unos pocos milisegundos y fiabilidades del 99.999%, una banda ancha mejorada (enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) usando las siglas en inglés) con notorios incrementos en el flujo de datos, e incluso la consideración de comunicaciones masivas entre maquinas (Massive Machine-Type Communications (mMTC) usando las siglas en inglés) entre dispositivos IoT. Es más, paradigmas como edge y fog computing se incorporaron a la tecnología 5G, e introducían la idea de tener dispositivos de computo más cercanos al usuario final. Como resultado, el problema del VNE tenía que incorporar los nuevos requisitos como restricciones a tener en cuenta, y toda solución debía satisfacer bajas latencias, alta fiabilidad, y mayores tasas de transmisión. Esta tesis estudia el problema des VNE, y propone algunos heurísticos que lidian con las restricciones asociadas a servicios 5G en escenarios edge y fog, es decir, las soluciones propuestas se encargan de asignar funciones virtuales de red a servidores, y deciden el enrutamiento del trafico en las infraestructuras 5G con dispositivos edge y fog. Para evaluar el rendimiento de las soluciones propuestas, esta tesis estudia en primer lugar la generación de grafos que representan redes 5G. Los mecanismos propuestos para la generación de grafos sirven para representar distintos escenarios 5G. En particular, escenarios de federación en los que varios dominios comparten recursos entre ellos. Los grafos generados también representan servidores en el edge, así como dispositivos fog con una batería limitada. Además, estos grafos tienen en cuenta los requisitos de estándares, y la demanda que se espera en las redes 5G. La generación de grafos propuesta sirve para representar escenarios federación en los que varios dominios comparten recursos entre ellos, y redes 5G con servidores edge, así como dispositivos fog estáticos o móviles con una batería limitada. Los grafos generados para infraestructuras 5G tienen en cuenta los requisitos de estándares, y la demanda de red que se espera en las redes 5G. Además, los grafos son diferentes en función de la densidad de población, y el área de estudio, es decir, si es una zona industrial, una autopista, o una zona urbana. Tras detallar la generación de grafos que representan redes 5G, esta tesis propone algoritmos de orquestación NFV para resolver con el problema del VNE. Primero, se centra en escenarios federados en los que los servicios de red se tienen que asignar no solo a la infraestructura de un dominio, sino a los recursos compartidos en la federación de dominios. Dos problemas diferentes han sido estudiados, uno es el problema del VNE propiamente dicho sobre una infraestructura federada, y el otro es la delegación de servicios de red. Es decir, si un servicio de red se debe desplegar localmente en un dominio, o en los recursos compartidos por la federación de dominios; a sabiendas de que el último caso supone el pago de cuotas por parte del dominio local a cambio del despliegue del servicio de red. En segundo lugar, esta tesis propone OKpi, un algoritmo de orquestación NFV para conseguir la calidad de servicio de las distintas slices de las redes 5G. Conceptualmente, el slicing consiste en partir la red de modo que cada servicio de red sea tratado de modo diferente dependiendo del trozo al que pertenezca. Por ejemplo, una slice de eHealth reservara los recursos de red necesarios para conseguir bajas latencias en servicios como operaciones quirúrgicas realizadas de manera remota. Cada trozo (slice) está destinado a unos servicios específicos con unos requisitos muy concretos, como alta fiabilidad, restricciones de localización, o latencias de un milisegundo. OKpi es un algoritmo de orquestación NFV que consigue satisfacer los requisitos de servicios de red en los distintos trozos, o slices de la red. Tras presentar OKpi, la tesis resuelve el problema del VNE en redes 5G con dispositivos fog estáticos y móviles. El algoritmo de orquestación NFV presentado tiene en cuenta las limitaciones de recursos de computo de los dispositivos fog, además de los problemas de falta de cobertura derivados de la movilidad de los dispositivos. Para concluir, esta tesis estudia el escalado de servicios vehiculares Vehicle-to-Network (V2N), que requieren de bajas latencias para servicios como la prevención de choques, avisos de posibles riesgos, y conducción remota. Para estos servicios, los atascos y congestiones en la carretera pueden causar el incumplimiento de los requisitos de latencia. Por tanto, es necesario anticiparse a esas circunstancias usando técnicas de series temporales que permiten saber el tráfico inminente en los siguientes minutos u horas, para así poder escalar el servicio V2N adecuadamente.Current network infrastructures handle a diverse range of network services such as video on demand services, video-conferences, social networks, educational systems, or photo storage services. These services have been embraced by a significant amount of the world population, and are used on a daily basis. Cloud providers and Network operators’ infrastructures accommodate the traffic rates that the aforementioned services generate, and their management tasks do not only involve the traffic steering, but also the processing of the network services’ traffic. Traditionally, the traffic processing has been assessed via applications/programs deployed on servers that were exclusively dedicated to a specific task as packet inspection. However, in recent years network services have stated to be virtualized and this has led to the Network Function Virtualization (Network Function Virtualization (NFV)) paradigm, in which the network functions of a service run on containers or virtual machines that are decoupled from the hardware infrastructure. As a result, the traffic processing has become more flexible because of the loose coupling between software and hardware, and the possibility of sharing common network functions, as firewalls, across multiple network services. NFV eases the automation of network operations, since scaling and migrations tasks are typically performed by a set of commands predefined by the virtualization technology, either containers or virtual machines. However, it is still necessary to decide the traffic steering and processing of every network service. In other words, which servers will hold the traffic processing, and which are the network links to be traversed so the users’ requests reach the final servers, i.e., the network embedding problem. Under the umbrella of NFV, this problem is known as Virtual Network Embedding (VNE), and this thesis refers as “NFV orchestration algorithms” to those algorithms solving such a problem. The VNE problem is a NP-hard, meaning that it is impossible to find optimal solutions in polynomial time, no matter the network size. As a consequence, the research and telecommunications community rely on heuristics that find solutions quicker than a commodity optimization solver. Traditionally, NFV orchestration algorithms have tried to minimize the deployment costs derived from their solutions. For example, they try to not exhaust the network bandwidth, and use short paths to use less network resources. Additionally, a recent tendency led the research community towards algorithms that minimize the energy consumption of the deployed services, either by selecting more energy efficient devices or by turning off those network devices that remained unused. VNE problem constraints were typically summarized in a set of resources/energy constraints, and the solutions differed on which objectives functions were aimed for. But that was before 5th generation of mobile networks (5G) were considered in the VNE problem. With the appearance of 5G, new network services and use cases started to emerge. The standards talked about Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communication (Ultra-Reliable and Low Latency Communications (URLLC)) with latencies below few milliseconds and 99.999% reliability, an enhanced mobile broadband (enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB)) with significant data rate increases, and even the consideration of massive machine-type communications (Massive Machine-Type Communications (mMTC)) among Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Moreover, paradigms such as edge and fog computing blended with the 5G technology to introduce the idea of having computing devices closer to the end users. As a result, the VNE problem had to incorporate the new requirements as constraints to be taken into account, and every solution should either satisfy low latencies, high reliability, or larger data rates. This thesis studies the VNE problem, and proposes some heuristics tackling the constraints related to 5G services in Edge and fog scenarios, that is, the proposed solutions assess the assignment of Virtual Network Functions to resources, and the traffic steering across 5G infrastructures that have Edge and Fog devices. To evaluate the performance of the proposed solutions, the thesis studies first the generation of graphs that represent 5G networks. The proposed mechanisms to generate graphs serve to represent diverse 5G scenarios. In particular federation scenarios in which several domains share resources among themselves. The generated graphs also represent edge servers, so as fog devices with limited battery capacity. Additionally, these graphs take into account the standard requirements, and the expected demand for 5G networks. Moreover, the graphs differ depending on the density of population, and the area of study, i.e., whether it is an industrial area, a highway, or an urban area. After detailing the generation of graphs representing the 5G networks, this thesis proposes several NFV orchestration algorithms to tackle the VNE problem. First, it focuses on federation scenarios in which network services should be assigned not only to a single domain infrastructure, but also to the shared resources of the federation of domains. Two different problems are studied, one being the VNE itself over a federated infrastructure, and the other the delegation of network services. That is, whether a network service should be deployed in a local domain, or in the pool of resources of the federation domain; knowing that the latter charges the local domain for hosting the network service. Second, the thesis proposes OKpi, a NFV orchestration algorithm to meet 5G network slices quality of service. Conceptually, network slicing consists in splitting the network so network services are treated differently based on the slice they belong to. For example, an eHealth network slice will allocate the network resources necessary to meet low latencies for network services such as remote surgery. Each network slice is devoted to specific services with very concrete requirements, as high reliability, location constraints, or 1ms latencies. OKpi is a NFV orchestration algorithm that meets the network service requirements among different slices. It is based on a multi-constrained shortest path heuristic, and its solutions satisfy latency, reliability, and location constraints. After presenting OKpi, the thesis tackles the VNE problem in 5G networks with static/moving fog devices. The presented NFV orchestration algorithm takes into account the limited computing resources of fog devices, as well as the out-of-coverage problems derived from the devices’ mobility. To conclude, this thesis studies the scaling of Vehicle-to-Network (V2N) services, which require low latencies for network services as collision avoidance, hazard warning, and remote driving. For these services, the presence of traffic jams, or high vehicular traffic congestion lead to the violation of latency requirements. Hence, it is necessary to anticipate to such circumstances by using time-series techniques that allow to derive the incoming vehicular traffic flow in the next minutes or hours, so as to scale the V2N service accordingly.The 5G Exchange (5GEx) project (2015-2018) was an EU-funded project (H2020-ICT-2014-2 grant agreement 671636). The 5G-TRANSFORMER project (2017-2019) is an EU-funded project (H2020-ICT-2016-2 grant agreement 761536). The 5G-CORAL project (2017-2019) is an EU-Taiwan project (H2020-ICT-2016-2 grant agreement 761586).Programa de Doctorado en Ingeniería Telemática por la Universidad Carlos III de MadridPresidente: Ioannis Stavrakakis.- Secretario: Pablo Serrano Yáñez-Mingot.- Vocal: Paul Horatiu Patra

    A modern teaching environment for process automation

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    Emergence of the new technological trends such as Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA), Industrial Ethernet, cloud computing and the 5th wireless network (5G) enabled the implementation of Cyber-physical System (CPS) with flexible, configurable, scalable and interoperable business models. This provides new opportunities for the process automation systems. On the other hand, the constant urge of industries for cost and material efficient processes demands a new automation paradigm with the latest tools and technologies which should be taken into account while teaching future automation engineers. In this thesis, the modern teaching environment for process automation is designed, implemented and described. This work explains the connections, configurations and the test of three mini plants including the Multiple Heat Exchanger, the Three-tank system and the Mixing Tank. In addition, OPC UA communication between the server and its clients has been tested. The plants are a part of the state of the art of the architecture that provides the access of ABB 800xA to the cloud services via OPC UA over the 5G test wireless network. This new paradigm changes the old automation hierarchy and enables the cross layered communication in the old architecture. This modern teaching environment prepares the students for the future automation challenges with the latest tools and merges data analytics, cloud computing and wireless network studies with process automation. It also provides the unique chance of testing the future trends together in this unique process automation setup

    A New Concept of Digital Twin Supporting Optimization and Resilience of Factories of the Future

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    In the context of Industry 4.0, a growing use is being made of simulation-based decision-support tools commonly named Digital Twins. Digital Twins are replicas of the physical manufacturing assets, providing means for the monitoring and control of individual assets. Although extensive research on Digital Twins and their applications has been carried out, the majority of existing approaches are asset specific. Little consideration is made of human factors and interdependencies between different production assets are commonly ignored. In this paper, we address those limitations and propose innovations for cognitive modeling and co-simulation which may unleash novel uses of Digital Twins in Factories of the Future. We introduce a holistic Digital Twin approach, in which the factory is not represented by a set of separated Digital Twins but by a comprehensive modeling and simulation capacity embracing the full manufacturing process including external network dependencies. Furthermore, we introduce novel approaches for integrating models of human behavior and capacities for security testing with Digital Twins and show how the holistic Digital Twin can enable new services for the optimization and resilience of Factories of the Future. To illustrate this approach, we introduce a specific use-case implemented in field of Aerospace System Manufacturing.The present work was developed under the EUREKA–ITEA3 Project CyberFactory#1 (ITEA-17032), co-funded by Project CyberFactory#1PT (ANI|P2020 40124), from FEDER Funds through NORTE2020 program and from National Funds through FCT under the project UID/EEA/00760/2019 and by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, Germany, funding No. 01IS18061C).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    Kommunikation und Bildverarbeitung in der Automation

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    In diesem Open-Access-Tagungsband sind die besten Beiträge des 9. Jahreskolloquiums "Kommunikation in der Automation" (KommA 2018) und des 6. Jahreskolloquiums "Bildverarbeitung in der Automation" (BVAu 2018) enthalten. Die Kolloquien fanden am 20. und 21. November 2018 in der SmartFactoryOWL, einer gemeinsamen Einrichtung des Fraunhofer IOSB-INA und der Technischen Hochschule Ostwestfalen-Lippe statt. Die vorgestellten neuesten Forschungsergebnisse auf den Gebieten der industriellen Kommunikationstechnik und Bildverarbeitung erweitern den aktuellen Stand der Forschung und Technik. Die in den Beiträgen enthaltenen anschaulichen Beispiele aus dem Bereich der Automation setzen die Ergebnisse in den direkten Anwendungsbezug

    Industrial internet and its role in process automation

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    Modern process automation undergoes a major shift in the way it addresses conventional challenges. Moreover, it is adapting to the newly arising challenges due to changing business scenarios. Nowadays, the areas of the automation that recently were rather separate start to merge and the border between them is fading. This situation only adds struggle to the already highly competitive production industry. In order to be successful, companies should adopt new approaches to the way their processes are automated, controlled, and managed. One of these approaches is the so-called Industrial Internet. It is the next step after the traditional paradigm of the process automation pyramid that leads to the new vision of interconnected processes, services, machines and people. However, general company does not usually eager to implement the new technology to its business. One of the reasons for this is that it does not see the advantages that the Industrial Internet brings. This is due to the lack of sufficient number of successful implementation examples in various industrial areas and of clear business scenarios for the use of the Industrial Internet. Aim of the presented thesis is to create a convincing Industrial Internet application scenario. For the implementation, a mineral concentration plant was chosen as one of the industrial premises that possesses the shortage of the Industrial Internet examples. Literature review section describes the process automation state of art. It lists and reviews the research and development initiatives related to the Industrial Internet. Moreover, the Industrial Internet fundamentals are given. Finally, it describes the Industrial Internet applications and the case studies. In the practical part, at first, the description of the mineral concentration plant is given. Then, the next section describes the Industrial Internet application scenario. In the following section technical guidelines for the system implementation are given. Also, in the concluding part of the thesis the future direction of research work are discussed

    Developing an Effective Detection Framework for Targeted Ransomware Attacks in Brownfield Industrial Internet of Things

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    The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is being interconnected with many critical industrial activities, creating major cyber security concerns. The key concern is with edge systems of Brownfield IIoT, where new devices and technologies are deployed to interoperate with legacy industrial control systems and leverage the benefits of IoT. These edge devices, such as edge gateways, have opened the way to advanced attacks such as targeted ransomware. Various pre-existing security solutions can detect and mitigate such attacks but are often ineffective due to the heterogeneous nature of the IIoT devices and protocols and their interoperability demands. Consequently, developing new detection solutions is essential. The key challenges in developing detection solutions for targeted ransomware attacks in IIoT systems include 1) understanding attacks and their behaviour, 2) designing accurate IIoT system models to test attacks, 3) obtaining realistic data representing IIoT systems' activities and connectivities, and 4) identifying attacks. This thesis provides important contributions to the research focusing on investigating targeted ransomware attacks against IIoT edge systems and developing a new detection framework. The first contribution is developing the world's first example of ransomware, specifically targeting IIoT edge gateways. The experiments' results demonstrate that such an attack is now possible on edge gateways. Also, the kernel-related activity parameters appear to be significant indicators of the crypto-ransomware attacks' behaviour, much more so than for similar attacks in workstations. The second contribution is developing a new holistic end-to-end IIoT security testbed (i.e., Brown-IIoTbed) that can be easily reproduced and reconfigured to support new processes and security scenarios. The results prove that Brown-IIoTbed operates efficiently in terms of its functions and security testing. The third contribution is generating a first-of-its-kind dataset tailored for IIoT systems covering targeted ransomware attacks and their activities, called X-IIoTID. The dataset includes connectivity- and device-agnostic features collected from various data sources. The final contribution is developing a new asynchronous peer-to-peer federated deep learning framework tailored for IIoT edge gateways for detecting targeted ransomware attacks. The framework's effectiveness has been evaluated against pre-existing datasets and the newly developed X-IIoTID dataset
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