A Cyber-Physical System-based Approach for Industrial Automation Systems

TL;DR

This paper presents a system-based framework for developing industrial automation systems using UML and SysML models, supporting both PLCs with IEC 61131 and embedded boards with Java, demonstrated through a lab case study.

Contribution

It introduces a unified approach for refining UML models into implementation code for industrial automation, integrating IEC 61131-3 with object-oriented features and Java for embedded systems.

Findings

Framework effectively refines UML to code for industrial automation

Supports both PLCs and embedded boards with tailored implementations

Demonstrated through a practical lab case study

Abstract

Industrial automation systems (IASs) are commonly developed using the languages defined by the IEC 61131 standard and are executed on PLCs. In this paper, a system-based approach for the development of IASs is adopted. A framework is described to refine the UML model of the software part, which is extracted from the SysML system model, and get the implementation code. Two implementation alternatives are considered to exploit PLCs but also the recent deluge of embedded boards in the market. For PLC targets, the new version of IEC 61131 that supports Object-Orientation is adopted, while Java is used for embedded boards. The case study was developed as a lab exercise for teaching the various technologies that address challenges in the domain of cyber-physical systems where Internet of Things (IoT) would be the glue regarding their cyber interfaces.