Automatic Information Model Generation for Industrial Edge Applications Based on IEC 61499 and OPC UA

Abstract

The Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet provides vertical and horizontal integration between edge devices and industrial cloud platforms. A flexible and interoperable information model is crucial for enabling device-level intelligence as well as cloud-edge collaboration. Deep integration between the control and information model is necessary for supporting closed-loop optimization between the cloud and edge devices. This article proposes an automatic information model generation method based on the IEC 61499 and OPC unified architecture standards. Model transformation rules between two models from design time to runtime are presented. A discrete manufacturing case study is used to prove that the proposed method can significantly reduce the development time for distributed information models. The integrated control and information models at runtime can provide strong support for dynamic reconfiguration to address changing requirements.