Reduction of development time by using scriptable IEC 61499 function blocks in a dynamically loadable type library

Abstract

The integration of functional independent modules into distributed control systems is a complex problem and often leads to high development time. Using the industrial standard IEC 61499, an open basis to force component interoperability is already given. However, a common weakness of many function block (FB) runtime environments can be located in the fact that FBs need to be compiled statically into the runtime. This leads to time consuming compilation cycles during FB development, due to frequent changes. We present a dynamic FB type library, which enables dynamic loading and interpreting of scriptable FB types during runtime startup. Benchmark tests underpin the applicability of this approach for rapid FB development and building project specific FB runtimes.