Arrowhead Framework Research Articles

Models2Code: Autonomous model‐based generation to expedite the engineering process

AbstractInsufficient resources and high costs are hindering industrial development, potentially impeding adaptation to market demands. Overcoming this challenge necessitates advancements in software engineering techniques to streamline processes and meet industrial requirements. Crucially, automating manual tasks and enhancing interoperability between engineering stages can yield efficiency gains. This paper presents a model‐based system engineering approach aimed at automating the transition from design to implementation, incorporating autonomous generation and validation features. Implemented as plugins and utilizing model transformation techniques, this solution targets reducing engineering time and facilitating the adoption of new technologies. Developed, implemented, and tested within the Arrowhead framework, the approach is followed by a discussion on its benefits and limitations.

Investigation of Microservice-Based Workflow Management Solutions for Industrial Automation

In an era ruled by data and information, engineers need new tools to cope with the increased complexity of industrial operations. New architectural models for industry enable open communication environments, where workflows can play a major role in providing flexible and dynamic interactions between systems. Workflows help engineers maintain precise control over their factory equipment and Information Technology (IT) services, from the initial design stages to plant operations. The current application of workflows departs from the classic business workflows that focus on office automation systems in favor of a manufacturing-oriented approach that involves direct interaction with cyber-physical systems (CPSs) on the shop floor. This paper identifies relevant industry-related challenges that hinder the adoption of workflow technology, which are classified within the context of a cohesive workflow lifecycle. The classification compares the various workflow management solutions and systems used to monitor and execute workflows. These solutions have been developed alongside the Eclipse Arrowhead framework, which provides a common infrastructure for designing systems according to the microservice architectural principles. This paper investigates and compares various solutions for workflow management and execution in light of the associated industrial requirements. Further, it compares various microservice-based approaches and their implementation. The objective is to support industrial stakeholders in their decision-making with regard to choosing among workflow management solutions.

SysML modeling of service-oriented system-of-systems

The success of the ongoing fourth industrial revolution largely depends on our ways to cope with the novel design challenges arising from a combination of an enormous increase in process and product complexity, as well as the expected autonomy and self-organization of complex and diverse industrial hardware–software installments, often called systems-of-systems. In this paper, we employ the service-oriented architectural paradigm, as materialized in the Eclipse Arrowhead framework, to represent modern systems engineering principles and their open structural principles and, thus, relevance to flexible and adaptive systems. As for adequately capturing the structural aspect, we propose using model-based engineering techniques and, in particular, a SysML-based specialization of systems modeling. The approach is illustrated by a real-life use-case in industrial automation.

Service Orchestration for Object Detection on Edge and Cloud in Dependable Industrial Vehicles

Industrial applications, including autonomous systems and vehicles, rely on processing data on multiple physical devices. The composition of functionality across heterogeneous computing infrastructure is challenging, and will likely get even more challenging in the future as software in vehicles is updated to introduce new features and ensure the safety. New soft real-time use cases emerge and in such cases the model of offloading processing from a limited or malfunctioning device is a viable solution. This study examines orchestration of services across edge and cloud for an industrial vehicle application use case involving image based object detection using machine learning (ML) based models. First, service orchestration requirements are defined taking into account the dependable nature of industrial vehicle applications. Second, an implementation based on Arrowhead framework is presented and evaluated. The open Arrowhead framework offers means for dynamic service discovery, authorization and late binding of computational units. The feasibility of object detection as a service and the suitability of Arrowhead framework to support such orchestrations across edge and cloud is assessed.

Security Standard Compliance Verification in System of Systems

Standard compliance in system of systems (SoS) means complying with standards, laws, and regulations that apply to services from several sources and different levels. Compliance is a major challenge in many organizations because any violation will lead to financial penalties, lawsuits fines, or revocation of licenses to operate within specific industrial market. To support the business lifecycle, organizations also need to monitor the actual processes during run time and not only in their design time. Standard compliance verification is important in the lifecycle for reasons, such as detection of noncompliance as well as operational decisions of running processes. With the promotion of connectivity of systems, existing and new security standards can be employed but there are important aspects, such as technically measurable indicators, in the standards and automation of compliance verification that need to be addressed. This article presents an automated and continuous standard compliance verification framework used to check devices, systems, and services for standard compliance during secure onboarding and run time. In addition, a case study for the Eclipse Arrowhead framework is used to demonstrate the functionality of the standard compliance verification in SoS.

System of Systems Lifecycle Management—A New Concept Based on Process Engineering Methodologies

In order to tackle interoperability issues of large-scale automation systems, SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) principles, where information exchange is manifested by systems providing and consuming services, have already been introduced. However, the deployment, operation, and maintenance of an extensive SoS (System of Systems) mean enormous challenges for system integrators as well as network and service operators. The existing lifecycle management approaches do not cover all aspects of SoS management; therefore, an integrated solution is required. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new lifecycle approach, namely the SoSLM (System of Systems Lifecycle Management). This paper first provides an in-depth description and comparison of the most relevant process engineering methodologies and ITSM (Information Technology Service Management) frameworks, and how they affect various lifecycle management strategies. The paper’s novelty strives to introduce an Industry 4.0-compatible PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) model and to extend it to cover SoS management-related issues on well-known process engineering methodologies. The presented methodologies are adapted to the PLM model, thus creating the recommended SoSLM model. This is supported by demonstrations of how the IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) applications and services can be developed and handled. Accordingly, complete implementation and integration are presented based on the proposed SoSLM model, using the Arrowhead framework that is available for IIoT SoS.

Dynamic Edge and Cloud Service Integration for Industrial IoT and Production Monitoring Applications of Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems

Industrial cyber-physical systems rely increasingly on data from Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and other systems as continuously emerging use cases implement new intelligent features. Edge computing can be seen as an extension of the cloud in close physical proximity, in which some of the typical cloud computing loads are beneficial to run. This article studies data analytics application development for integration of industrial IoT data and composition of application services executed on edge and cloud. A solution is designed to support heterogeneous hardware and run-time platforms, and focuses on the service layer that enables flexible orchestration of data flows and dynamic service compositions. The unified model and system architecture implemented, using the open Arrowhead framework model, is verified through two representative industrial use cases.

Automated and Secure Onboarding for System of Systems

The Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly changing the number of connected devices and the way they interact with each other. This increases the need for an automated and secure onboarding procedure for IoT devices, systems and services. Device manufacturers are entering the market with internet connected devices, ranging from small sensors to production devices, which are subject of security threats specific to IoT. The onboarding procedure is required to introduce a new device in a System of Systems (SoS) without compromising the already onboarded devices and the underlying infrastructure. Onboarding is the process of providing access to the network and registering the components for the first time in an IoT/SoS framework, thus creating a chain of trust from the hardware device to its hosted software systems and their provided services. The large number and diversity of device hardware, software systems and running services raises the challenge to establish a generic onboarding procedure. In this paper, we present an automated and secure onboarding procedure for SoS. We have implemented the onboarding procedure in the Eclipse Arrowhead framework. However, it can be easily adapted for other IoT/SoS frameworks that are based on Service-oriented Architecture (SoA) principles. The automated onboarding procedure ensures a secure and trusted communication between the new IoT devices and the Eclipse Arrowhead framework. We show its application in a smart charging use case and perform a security assessment.

Security and Autonomic Management in System of Systems

A system of systems integrates systems that function independently but are networked together for a period of time to achieve a higher goal. These systems evolve over time and have emergent properties. Therefore, even with security controls in place, it is difficult to maintain a required level of security for the system of systems as a whole because uncertainties may arise at runtime. Uncertainties can occur from internal factors, such as malfunctions of a system, or from external factors, such as malicious attacks. Self-adaptation is an approach that allows a system to adapt in the face of such uncertainties without human intervention. This work outlines the progress made towards security mitigation in system of systems using a generic autonomic management system to assist engineers in developing self-adaptive systems. The manuscript describes the proposed system design, its implementation as part of the Eclipse Arrowhead framework, and its functionality in a smart agriculture use case. The system is designed and implemented in such a way that it can be reused and extended for a variety of use cases without requiring major changes.

An Open Source Framework Approach to Support Condition Monitoring and Maintenance

This paper discusses the integration of emergent ICTs, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), the Arrowhead Framework, and the best practices from the area of condition monitoring and maintenance. These technologies are applied, for instance, for roller element bearing fault diagnostics and analysis by simulating faults. The authors first undertook the leading industry standards for condition-based maintenance (CBM), i.e., open system architecture–condition-based maintenance (OSA–CBM) and Machinery Information Management Open System Alliance (MIMOSA), which has been working towards standardizing the integration and interchangeability between systems. In addition, this paper highlights the predictive health monitoring methods that are needed for an effective CBM approach. The monitoring of industrial machines is discussed as well as the necessary details are provided regarding a demonstrator built on a metal sheet bending machine of the Greenbender family. Lastly, the authors discuss the benefits of the integration of the developed prototypes into a service-oriented platform, namely the Arrowhead Framework, which can be instrumental for the remotization of maintenance activities, such as the analysis of various equipment that are geographically distributed, to push forward the grand vision of the servitization of predictive health monitoring methods for large-scale interoperability.

Dynamic Multilevel Workflow Management Concept for Industrial IoT Systems

Workflow management is implemented in manufacturing at many levels. The nature of processes varies at each level, hindering the use of a standard modeling or implementation solution. The creation of a flexible workflow management framework that overarches the heterogeneous business process levels is challenging. Still, one of the promises of the Industry 4.0 initiative is precisely this: to provide easy-to-use models and solutions that enable efficient execution of enterprise targets. By addressing this challenge, this article proposes a workflow execution model that integrates information and control flows of these levels while keeping their hierarchy. The overall model builds on the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) for modeling at the enterprise level and recipe modeling based on colored Petri net (CPN) at the production level. Models produced with both alternatives are implemented and executed in a framework supported by an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). Loosely coupled, late-bound system elements are connected through the Arrowhead framework, which is built upon the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) concept. To prove its feasibility, this article presents the practical application of the model via an automotive production scenario. Note to Practitioners —The methodology detailed in this article can serve as a basis for experts who are dealing with industrial workflows. Reacting to the requirements of Industry 4.0, i.e., the virtualization, decentralization, modularity, real-time capability, and service orientation, this article provides a concept that can answer all the defined criteria. First, it adopts a new two-level approach to workflow management, which makes the understanding and control of workflows easier, enhancing transparency. Furthermore, it demonstrates how—even completely different—applications and modeling languages can be integrated into a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). The presented composition and the used tools are all tried and tested. Behind the solution described in this article, there is a genuine, working code wherewith the presented end-to-end workflow management can be achieved. Following the methodology detailed in this article, the readers can construct their workflow management composition. In order to report on the performance of the created solution, this article presents different measurement compositions that allow the investigation of the essential components separately, demonstrating the scalability and temporal parameters.

Arrowhead Technology for Digitalization and Automation Solution: Smart Cities and Smart Agriculture.

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept has met requirements for security and reliability in domains like automotive industry, food industry, as well as precision agriculture. Furthermore, System of Systems (SoS) expands the use of local clouds for the evolution of integration and communication technologies. SoS devices need to ensure Quality of Service (QoS) capabilities including service-oriented management and different QoS characteristics monitoring. Smart applications depend on information quality since they are driven by processes which require communication robustness and enough bandwidth. Interconnectivity and interoperability facilities among different smart devices can be achieved using Arrowhead Framework technology via its core systems and services. Arrowhead Framework is targeting smart IoT devices with wide applicability areas including smart building, smart energy, smart cities, smart agriculture, etc. The advantages of Arrowhead Framework can be underlined by parameters such as transmission speed, latency, security, etc. This paper presents a survey of Arrowhead Framework in IoT/SoS dedicated architectures for smart cities and smart agriculture developed around smart cities, aiming to outline its significant impact on the global performances. The advantages of Arrowhead Framework technology are emphasized by analysis of several smart cities use-cases and a novel architecture for a telemetry system that will enable the use of Arrowhead technology in smart agriculture area is introduced and detailed by authors.

Efficient Device-to-Device Service Invocation Using Arrowhead Orchestration

The Internet of Things (IoT) enables interaction from real-world physical objects using sensors to the virtual world of computers and the Internet. The use of service-oriented architecture (SOA) is one step in the creation of basic and complex interactions between several sensors and actuators. However, the use of SOA-enabled technologies alone does not meet all requirements of how sensor and actuator systems could be integrated to create distributed monitoring and control applications. The centralized, traditional method of communication in wireless sensor networks via a gateway presents drawbacks that have to be addressed; device-to-cloud communication adds higher latency and higher power consumption and is less robust than the device-to-device (D2D) communication approach. Moreover, all these characteristics reduce the scalability of the network, thus limiting the use of IoT in the industry. In this article, the proposed method utilizes the arrowhead framework orchestration system to generate service composition within a (wireless) network formed by IoT devices. The aim is to achieve efficient D2D service invocation to reduce the drawbacks of today’s widely used device-to-cloud approach. The method in this article performs efficient service composition for industrial IoT, including mapping SOA service composition in very small resource-constrained devices using the arrowhead orchestration. The results presented in this article at the service level can increase performance and robustness in fog computing on resource-constrained devices.

Autonomous Production Workstation Operation, Reconfiguration and Synchronization

The decoupling of production line’s workstations and its equipment from the higher layers in an automation architecture has the potential to provide the following benefits: 1. Dynamic workstation reconfiguration; 2. Autonomous synchronization of workstation equipment; 3. Autonomous workstation operation.Each of these benefits will improve the automation flexibility at each workstation and for the whole production line.Introducing IoT equipment into workstations and making use of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) fundamentals such as lookup, late binding and loose coupling are shown here to provide the above benefits. In addition, the cost of such an implementation and deployment seems to be significantly less than the comparable cost for legacy technology.An implementation, using the SOA approach on a workstation, at the Volvo Trucks production facility in Gothenburg was made possible thanks to the Arrowhead framework, which has been shown to provide all three listed improvements.The analysis of the above-mentioned demonstration clearly shows how the workstation reconfiguration is made simple using the arrowhead ServiceRegistry system. Autonomous synchronization is achieved through the look-up and late binding capabilities provided by the arrowhead Orchestration system in cooperation with the ServiceRegistry system. Finally, autonomous workstation operation is provided through the support of the arrowhead Workflow Manager and Workflow Executor systems.All these benefits were achieved at a significantly reduced cost compared to comparable legacy implementation.

A Methodology for the Design of Safety-Compliant and Secure Communication of Autonomous Vehicles

The automotive industry is increasing its effort towards scientific and technological innovations regarding autonomous vehicles. The expectation is a reduction of road accidents, which are too often caused by human errors. Moreover, technological solutions, such as connected autonomous vehicle platoons, are expected to help humans in emergency situations. In this context, safety and security issues do not yet have a satisfactory answer. In this paper, we address the domain of secure communication among vehicles – especially the issues related to authentication and authorization of inter-vehicular signals and services carrying safety commands. We propose a novel design methodology, where we take a contract-based approach for specifying safety, and combine it in the design flow with the use of the Arrowhead Framework to support security. Furthermore, we present the results through a demo, which employs model-based design for software implementation and the physical realization on autonomous model cars.

Extended Semantic Annotations for Generating Translators in the Arrowhead Framework

In order to create distributed automation systems, it is required to ensure their interoperability; however, ensuring interoperability between heterogeneous systems (using different communication protocols, data formats, and semantics) is a challenging task. Among many interoperability challenges, this paper addresses issues concerning semantic and data interoperability, namely, it provides a contribution to support the semantic compatibility verification and the generation of translators for XML messages. Translators are generated based on XML-schemas that are annotated with a reference ontology. We base our annotations on an extension of an existing declarative annotation method. In particular, our extension explicitly addresses ambiguities of annotations, schema instance mismatches, and coverage mismatches that frequently occur on Internet-of-things message schemas. We have evaluated our approach based on a set of interaction scenarios from the domain of the Arrowhead Project. A tool prototype that supports the semantic compatibility verification and the generation of XML translators is available at http://gres.uninova.pt/tag/ .

A Multi-Usable Cloud Service Platform: A Case Study on Improved Development Pace and Efficiency

The case study, spanning three contexts, concerns a multi-usable cloud service platform for big data collection and analytics and how the development pace and efficiency of it has been improved by 50–75% by using the Arrowhead framework and changing development processes/practices. Furthermore, additional results captured during the case study are related to technology, competencies and skills, organization, management, infrastructure, and service and support. A conclusion is that when offering a complex offer such as an Industrial Product-Service System, comprising sensors, hardware, communications, software, cloud service platform, etc., it is necessary that the technology, business model, business setup, and organization all go hand in hand during the development and later operation, as all ‘components’ are required for a successful result.

Integrated Infrastructure for Electro Mobility Powered by the Arrowhead Framework

Electro Mobility is a rapidly growing and evolving application domain of the Internet of Things, with a huge market potential in various areas. It incorporates many stakeholders—from manufacturers to the players of the energy market—with all sorts of physical and virtual resources. It is essential to allow these devices and systems to collaborate in order to create advanced e-Mobility services. This collaboration requires accurate, yet flexible and scalable methods for information exchange related to configuration, security, orchestration, accounting, and several types of reporting. In order to fulfill such requirements, the Arrowhead framework is built upon the concepts of service-oriented architectures and aims at providing support for IP-based networking within industrial environments. This paper presents the establishment and operation of the e-Mobility infrastructure supported by the Arrowhead framework. First, the stakeholders and their relationships are identified based on well-known market models and state-of-the-art open standards. After this, a distributed, service-oriented infrastructure is proposed and demonstrated through the integration of legacy and new application systems within the framework. The integration between the recharging infrastructure and the smart grid is also covered.

System of System Composition Based on Decentralized Service-Oriented Architecture

As society has progressed through periods of evolution and revolution, technology has played a key role as an enabler. In the same manner, mechanical machines of the 1800s drove the industrial revolution, now digitalized machines are driving another industrial revolution. Manufacturers are increasing the digital footprint on the factory floor. It is challenging to harness the vast amounts of data generated, stored, analyzed, archived, and returned. Data centralization has several well-known challenges, such as collection bottlenecks, secure retrieval, single point of failure, and data scheme fragility as data heterogeneity increases. This paper proposes a method of information distribution based on the principle of data at its source . It proposes that contextual data be used at runtime through the creation of dynamic queries that build compositions of different systems. Such system of systems (SoS) compositions handle the flow of data across its life cycle and present it as information to the initiating system. The proposal starts by creating a graph model of the Arrowhead framework. Then, building on the graph model, the query-based approach for specifying, validating, and forming the SoS is proposed. The proposed graph model allows for unambiguous description of systems and their interrelations, including security relations. The proposed composer operates on the edge computing hardware and gives the production floor the ability to extract information without impacting the overall operation of the factory.

Local Cloud Internet of Things Automation: Technology and Business Model Features of Distributed Internet of Things Automation Solutions

The hype concerning digitalization is increasing the demand for new generations of automation systems. Concepts like Reference Architecture Model Industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0) give us models but do not tell us how to facilitate actual implementations. This article discusses the transition from legacy automation technology as defined by ISA-95 to highly distributed Internet of Things (IoT)- and system of systems (SoS)- based automation systems that fully utilize Internet technologies, thus enabling the implementation of Industry 4.0 and RAMI 4.0 models. Distributed IoT automation systems have a number of general requirements concerning real-time performance, security, engineering cost, scalability, and interoperability. Meeting these requirements is necessary to enable possibilities for a realworld implementation of IoT automation. A key concept is local automation clouds. The discussion is based on a particular example of such an automation integration platform, the Arrowhead Framework.