Factory Automation Environments Research Articles

<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\mathsf{ENCLOSE}}$</tex-math> </inline-formula>: An Enhanced Wireless Interface for Communication in Factory Automation Networks

Wireless technologies are increasingly gaining popularity for many industrial automation applications. State-of-the-art wireless technologies mainly support monitoring and open-loop control applications at the lowest level of the automation pyramid. The use of wireless technologies for closed-loop control applications is still in infancy. This paper proposes a novel wireless solution, termed as ${\mathsf{ENCLOSE}}$ , for closed-loop control applications at the sensor/actuator level of factory automation. At the Physical layer, ${\mathsf{ENCLOSE}}$ adopts IEEE 802.15.1 specifications with an enhanced data rate feature. The medium access control layer of ${\mathsf{ENCLOSE}}$ is based on time-division multiple access and frequency-division duplexing. ${\mathsf{ENCLOSE}}$ is based on an optimized frame structure for achieving low latency while accounting for the peculiarities of closed-loop control. Moreover, ${\mathsf{ENCLOSE}}$ implements two different cooperative multi-user diversity techniques for achieving high reliability. Performance evaluation, based on comprehensive analytical modeling and system-level simulation studies, demonstrates that ${\mathsf{ENCLOSE}}$ provides a practical solution, that fulfils the stringent requirements of closed-loop control applications in factory automation environments.

Manufacturing System Upgrade with Wireless and Distributed Automation

This paper presents a case study of developing a distributed factory automation system model upgrade with decentralized control deployed on a network of six programmable automation controllers communicating wirelessly. The goal is to develop a distributed system which is flexible enough, and easier to reconfigure with on-the-fly online software updates in a smart factory automation environment. Our approach benefits mainly production industries which require a robust and modular software design requiring less effort for their production line. The developed solution aims at flexibility, re-configurability, ease of maintenance and reduced downtime costs.

Decentralized Traffic Aware Scheduling in 6TiSCH Networks: Design and Experimental Evaluation

This paper capitalizes on two emerging trends, i.e., the growing use of wireless at the edge of industrial control networks and the growing interest to integrate IP into said networks. This is facilitated by recent design contributions from the IEEE and the IETF, where the former developed a highly efficient deterministic time–frequency scheduled medium access control protocol in the form of IEEE 802.15.4e timeslotted channel hopping (TSCH) and the latter IPv6 networking paradigms in the form of 6LoWPAN/ROLL, and scheduling approaches in the form of 6TiSCH. The focus of the present work is on advancing the state-of-the-art of deterministic 6TiSCH schedules toward more flexible but equally reliable distributed approaches. In addition, this paper aims to introduce the first implementation of 6TiSCH networks for factory automation environments: it outlines the challenges faced to overcome the scalability issues inherent to multihop dense low-power networks; the experimental results confirm that the naturally unreliable radio medium can support time-critical and reliable applications. These developments pave the way for wireless industry-grade monitoring approaches.

Web services-based automation for the control and monitoring of production systems

Autonomous and intelligent control devices within the context of factory automation are seen as an essential ingredient in making time and cost savings in factory automation environments. In moving to mass customisation scenarios where production lines are subjected to frequent changes and mixed types of products, the agility and reconfigurability of automation systems are prime requirements to support changes in manufacturing lifecycles. In addition, intelligent functionalities including process monitoring, diagnostics and process reconfiguration are also desirable factors to facilitate an effective production unit with competitive costs and ease of use and maintenance. In this context, the adoption of Web Services on the distributed embedded control devices to enhance reconfigurability and integrability with supported manufacturing and business applications is proposed. This paper demonstrates the use of Web Services (WS) both in building device control functionality of control components and in business application integration. This WS approach offers the ability to integrate pervasive enterprise applications (e.g. process monitoring and planning systems) as well as the ability to reconfigure and manage lower level devices from higher manufacturing and business control levels through unifying WS interface and neutral Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) message communication between control systems and business applications.

Specification of a Device Interface for Service-Oriented Automation Control Components

Service-oriented paradigm is being used to develop distributed and reconfigurable control solutions for factory automation environments. Since service-oriented automation control components are logical entities that provide and consume services, they may have an interface that maps the logical processes into the actions of the representative physical mechatronics. The inter-connection with the physical hardware devices, namely accessing I/Os, is a crucial issue to achieve the vertical IT-enterprise integration in these service-oriented systems, covering the shop floor device control level. This paper describes a device interface approach, in the context of a service-oriented control architecture, in which High-level Petri nets are used as the control description to access to the physical device. The outgoing features of the solution allow integrating the physical behavior into the control of automation components and consequently thereby incorporate it in the modular service-oriented control architecture.

동적계획법을 이용한 자동화 공정에서의 제품 ID 마크 자동분할 알고리듬 개발

This paper presents a method to segment object ID(identification) marks on poor quality images under uncontrolled lighting conditions of automated inspection process. The method is based on dynamic programming using multiple templates and normalized gray-level correlation (NGC) method. If the lighting condition is not good and hence, we can not control the image quality, target image to be inspected presents poor quality ID marks and it is not easy to identify and recognize the ID characters. Conventional several methods to segment the interesting ID mark regions fail on the bad quality images. In this paper, we propose a multiple template method, which uses combinational relation of multiple templates from model templates to match several characters of the inspection images. To increase the computation speed to segment the ID mark regions, we introduce the dynamic programming based algorithm. Experimental results using images from real factory automation(FA) environment are presented.