Open communication protocols for integration of embedded systems within Industry 4

This article deals with Industry 4 as a new paradigm for manufacturing of the future. Internet of Things and new communication approach can lead to next generation of automated solutions as next step from currently isolated automation systems to Cyber-Physical Systems. Article tries to create model for DDS protocol considering real time requirements with QoS feature

Towards a real-time capable plug & produce environment for adaptable factories

Industrial manufacturing is currently undergoing a transformation from mass production with inflexible production systems to individual production with adaptable cells. In order to ensure this adaptability of these systems, technologies such as plug & produce are needed, to integrate, modify and remove devices at runtime. Therefor an exact description of the system, the products and the capabilities / skills of the devices is essential as well as a network for communication between the devices. Deterministic data transmission is particularly important for distributed control systems. We propose an architecture for plug & produce mechanisms with hard real-time capable communication paths between the cyber-physical components using OPC UA PubSub over TSN and the ability to load and execute real-time critical tasks at runtime

A Real-Time Communication Architecture for Metal Powder Bed Fusion Additive Manufacturing

Recent advancements in the field of additive manufacturing continue to push its application deeper into commercial use. However, concerns persist regarding the consistency of part quality, methodologies for quality assurance, and cyber-physical system security. These concerns are exacerbated by the closed-system architecture implemented by most commercial powder bed fusion additive manufacturing (PBFAM) machine manufacturers. Though implementation of device and process monitoring equipment is often suggested to address these concerns, deployment is hampered by the inability to extract real-time information from closed systems during the build process, including scanner position, laser power, sensor data, etc. Here, a framework for an open and transparent communication protocol for PBFAM systems is developed and implemented on a 3DSystems ProX-200 machine. Real-time measurement of build process parameters and synchronization with an optical emission sensor is demonstrated. The utility of the protocol and real-time sensing for PBFAM are discussed.Mechanical Engineerin

Real-Time Wireless Sensor-Actuator Networks for Cyber-Physical Systems

A cyber-physical system (CPS) employs tight integration of, and coordination between computational, networking, and physical elements. Wireless sensor-actuator networks provide a new communication technology for a broad range of CPS applications such as process control, smart manufacturing, and data center management. Sensing and control in these systems need to meet stringent real-time performance requirements on communication latency in challenging environments. There have been limited results on real-time scheduling theory for wireless sensor-actuator networks. Real-time transmission scheduling and analysis for wireless sensor-actuator networks requires new methodologies to deal with unique characteristics of wireless communication. Furthermore, the performance of a wireless control involves intricate interactions between real-time communication and control. This thesis research tackles these challenges and make a series of contributions to the theory and system for wireless CPS. (1) We establish a new real-time scheduling theory for wireless sensor-actuator networks. (2) We develop a scheduling-control co-design approach for holistic optimization of control performance in a wireless control system. (3) We design and implement a wireless sensor-actuator network for CPS in data center power management. (4) We expand our research to develop scheduling algorithms and analyses for real-time parallel computing to support computation-intensive CPS

A Methodology for the Design and Creation of Asset Administration Shell for Manufacturing Systems

Within Industry 4.0 the communication between the physical and the cyber part of manufacturing systems is in growing rise in complexity. The Asset Administration Shell (AAS) is an information framework that represents the technological features of an asset. This work addresses the design of AAS by proposing a methodology to guide practitioners through the process of creating AAS models for manufacturing systems, and populating them with real-time data from the field. The aim of the paper is to design a methodology for the creation of AAS that is user friendly and functional to be followed by non-IT experts. The proposed methodology has been applied and validated within the Industry 4.0 Lab of the School of Management of Politecnico Di Milano

Cybersecurity issues in motion control – an overview of challenges

The fourth industrial revolution known as Industry 4.0 brings digitalization of manufacturing processes to a new level through ubiquitous interconnection and real-time information flow between information technologies (IT) and operational technologies (OT) as parts of Industrial Control Systems (ICS). This information flow is not limited to but expands beyond factory walls enabling manufacturing systems to adapt quickly and efficiently to changing customer demands and diversified products. The adaptation is carried out through physical and/or functional reconfiguration of manufacturing systems where Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) based on Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) represents the key technical enabler. These changes result in a transition from centralized to distributed control systems architecture where the whole control task is achieved through intensive cooperation between smart devices (e.g., sensors and actuators) with integrated communication and computation capabilities. However, introducing IIoT in ICS brings about new cybersecurity issues due to increased communication between system elements and connection to the global network, making ICS vulnerable to different cyber-attacks with potentially catastrophic consequences. Recently, the research in ICS cybersecurity has intensified leading to significant results for continuous time and discrete events-controlled systems. However, cybersecurity issues in motion control systems that are frequently employed in different manufacturing resources such as machine tools and industrial robots were not sufficiently explored. This work provides an overview of the cybersecurity related challenges in motion control tasks

Implementation of cnn based algorithm for cyber-attacks detection on a real-world control system

The emergence of the Industry 4.0 concept leads to crucial changes in manufacturing by building advanced industrial systems and applications based on Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), as the core of this approach. Using CPS, manufacturing assets are designed in the form of systems of systems through interconnection of smart devices with integrated computation and communication capabilities. System control logic is distributed over a large number of resources, and its performance is achieved through their coordinated work and ubiquitous communication raising the issue of cyber-attacks by malicious adversaries. Since cybersecurity within industrial control systems is safety related, it is necessary to timely detect cyber-attacks on industrial assets; for these purposes a number of different approaches have been developed. As a technique of choice, deep learning (DL) based methods emerge, providing good online performances. In this work, we focus on the implementation of a DL based cyber-attack detection algorithm on an electro-pneumatic positioning system containing smart sensor and smart actuator. In particular, we employ cyber-attack detection procedure based on 1D Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) at the local controller of the smart actuator. The implemented algorithm can successfully detect cyber-attacks in real-time, as will be experimentally demonstrated

Towards a Cyber-Physical Manufacturing Cloud through Operable Digital Twins and Virtual Production Lines

In last decade, the paradigm of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) has integrated industrial manufacturing systems with Cloud Computing technologies for Cloud Manufacturing. Up to 2015, there were many CPS-based manufacturing systems that collected real-time machining data to perform remote monitoring, prognostics and health management, and predictive maintenance. However, these CPS-integrated and network ready machines were not directly connected to the elements of Cloud Manufacturing and required human-in-the-loop. Addressing this gap, we introduced a new paradigm of Cyber-Physical Manufacturing Cloud (CPMC) that bridges a gap between physical machines and virtual space in 2017. CPMC virtualizes machine tools in cloud through web services for direct monitoring and operations through Internet. Fundamentally, CPMC differs with contemporary modern manufacturing paradigms. For instance, CPMC virtualizes machining tools in cloud using remote services and establish direct Internet-based communication, which is overlooked in existing Cloud Manufacturing systems. Another contemporary, namely cyber-physical production systems enable networked access to machining tools. Nevertheless, CPMC virtualizes manufacturing resources in cloud and monitor and operate them over the Internet. This dissertation defines the fundamental concepts of CPMC and expands its horizon in different aspects of cloud-based virtual manufacturing such as Digital Twins and Virtual Production Lines. Digital Twin (DT) is another evolving concept since 2002 that creates as-is replicas of machining tools in cyber space. Up to 2018, many researchers proposed state-of-the-art DTs, which only focused on monitoring production lifecycle management through simulations and data driven analytics. But they overlooked executing manufacturing processes through DTs from virtual space. This dissertation identifies that DTs can be made more productive if they engage directly in direct execution of manufacturing operations besides monitoring. Towards this novel approach, this dissertation proposes a new operable DT model of CPMC that inherits the features of direct monitoring and operations from cloud. This research envisages and opens the door for future manufacturing systems where resources are developed as cloud-based DTs for remote and distributed manufacturing. Proposed concepts and visions of DTs have spawned the following fundamental researches. This dissertation proposes a novel concept of DT based Virtual Production Lines (VPL) in CPMC in 2019. It presents a design of a service-oriented architecture of DTs that virtualizes physical manufacturing resources in CPMC. Proposed DT architecture offers a more compact and integral service-oriented virtual representations of manufacturing resources. To re-configure a VPL, one requirement is to establish DT-to-DT collaborations in manufacturing clouds, which replicates to concurrent resource-to-resource collaborations in shop floors. Satisfying the above requirements, this research designs a novel framework to easily re-configure, monitor and operate VPLs using DTs of CPMC. CPMC publishes individual web services for machining tools, which is a traditional approach in the domain of service computing. But this approach overcrowds service registry databases. This dissertation introduces a novel fundamental service publication and discovery approach in 2020, OpenDT, which publishes DTs with collections of services. Experimental results show easier discovery and remote access of DTs while re-configuring VPLs. Proposed researches in this dissertation have received numerous citations both from industry and academia, clearly proving impacts of research contributions