Web-Based Information Technology for Remote Handling of Electrical Drives and Control Devices: An Integrated Approach

The contribution describes an infrastructure for remote handling of electrical drives and their associated control environment. The architecture presented is based on "web technologies" ("web services"), the target devices are understood as embedded systems. Background: Installations of electrical drives are continually growing regarding number of components and communication performance. Increasingly these highly specialized automation systems have to be perceived as heterogeneously designed, globally distributed structures with an emerging need for homogeneous handling and maintenance, for remote diagnostic, for the reduction of complexity, and for the development and consolidation of security concepts. The objective is a communication architecture connecting dedicated server and client components via Internet: data formats, communication procedures, services and function calls combined in a universal manner with consideration to the needs occurring with remote handling of electrical drives. A description is given of a prototype implementation at the Erlangen Chair of Information Technologies (LIKE).