A Concept for a user-friendly first Communication Initiation between Stationary Field Devices and Mobile Interaction Devices

Abstract

AbstractThis paper presents a concept for a user-friendly way to establish ad-hoc physical communication connections between industrial field devices and mobile control devices supporting several communication standards. For the human user in the future factory, this concept allows for more flexibility, mobility and safety. Hence it represents the basis for the nomadic user.Key of the presented concept is a reference model that specifies all communication relevant information of a field device, attaching this information to the device by using an inexpensive passive data carrier. Furthermore, this reference model manages data like multi-user behavior and user-rights, enabling a flexible user-centered device interaction which satisfies the needs of industrial environments in future factories. With a reference model like that most ubiquitous technologies will be much easier to use in ad-hoc linked environments. The concept presented in this paper has been tested and evaluated in the SmartFactoryKL, the intelligent factory of the future. The results of this evaluation, which focus on the acceptance of users with regard to usability, show that there is a significant enhancement in compare to the state of the art identification methods.