Automatic composition of IEC 61499 distributed control applications

Current complex industrial automation applications demand distribution, flexibility as well as adaptability to changes. On the other hand, the IEC 61499 standard specifically addresses this type of applications. It supports the definition of multidisciplinary views to independently define the functionality of the system from the hardware architecture. Notwithstanding this, although it was specifically defined to support the design of distributed automation applications, it is not being consolidated in industry as it expected. Among others, one of the reasons that can explain this situation is the lack of design methodologies and powerful tools oriented to designers. Using the available frameworks that support this standard, it is necessary to manually introduce the ad-hoc Service Interface Function Block (SIFB) as well as their link to the application Function Blocks (FB). This paper addresses this issue and it proposes a methodology to automatically generate distributed automation applications from the functional and architecture views, i.e. using the appropriated SIFBs from a SIFB repository of templates.