IEC 61499 distributed control enhanced with cloud-based web-services

This paper presents a framework for employing cloud- deployable web services in the design of distributed control systems in industrial automation. The paper demonstrates how a part of the control logic can be developed as a web service and deployed in the cloud to improve reusability and flexibility. In order to demonstrate the use of the framework we consider an example of Pick-and-Place Manipulator, which was originally designed as IEC 61499 function block application with a distributed control consisting of a high level and a low-level control logic. Firstly the high level control and its functionality is converted to a web services and deployed to a cloud. Secondly the application is modified such that the low level control interacts with these newly developed web services. The paper also presents an interface between low level control and web service using dynamic linked library that bridges communication between the two components It concludes with the simulation results of the of Pick-and-Place Manipulator implemented using the proposed framework.