A unified framework for the design of distributed cyber-physical systems - industrial automation example

Modern manufacturing systems are best examples where networked embedded controllers and mechatronic devices form the so-called distributed cyber physical systems (CPS). Design and deployment of such systems pose significant challenges to traditional PLC-based software design approaches. In this paper, a unified framework for the design and deployment of such systems based on a formal language, SystemJ, is presented. The proposed framework supports implementing distributed CPS at system level abstraction with correct by construction design. The designed software components can easily interact with each other and with web-based interface for modelling and validation via simulation and subsequently run on embedded controllers without any change, which simplifies the design and implementation process significantly. An ice-cream manufacturing system (ICMF) example is presented to illustrate the proposed approach.