Tag Archives: OPCUA

OPC UA Makes Machine-Centric Global Village Possible – Call for Sponsors

I4.0, IoT, M2M, OPC UA January 3, 2020 Leave a comment

Object-Oriented Internet – Machines to Machine Meaningful Interoperability

It is said that we are or soon will be citizens of a global village – a world considered as a single community linked by telecommunications. All applications designed atop of network communication can be grouped as follows:

  • human-centric – applications where the information origin or information destination is an operator
  • machine-centric – applications where information creation, consumption, networking, and processing are achieved entirely without human interaction

A typical human-centric approach is web-service supporting, for example, online bank account management. In this case, it is essential that any uncertainty and necessity to make a decision can be relaxed by human interaction. Coordination of multi-robot behavior in a work-cell or autonomous cars entering a service area fulfills the machine-centric scenario. It is crucial that, in this case, any human interaction is impractical or even impossible. This interoperability scenario requires a machine to machine communication (M2M) demanding multi-vendor devices integration.

The human-centric global village is almost done. However, the machine-centric global village still needs design and development effort. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has provided society with a vast variety of distributed machine-oriented applications including the meaningful Machine to Machine (M2M) communication targeting distributed mobile applications in the context of new emerging disciplines, i.e. Industry 4.0 (I40) and Internet of Things (IoT). However, it is a real challenge if the mentioned machines are provided by a vast variety of vendors. The real challenge we are facing is how to produce independently smart things (i.e. machines, devices, appliances, assets, etc.) to guarantee that they are plug and produce ready. There are no doubts, it requires standardization. I believe that while producing the machines in compliance with the OPC Unified Architecture this issue is relaxed by applying the following OPC UA standardized concepts:

  • Information Model – all about how to design a formal but mutually meaningful and shareable description of the considered process
  • Address Space – all about how to instantiate and expose to the network a life replica of the process providing real-time data according to the above-mentioned formal description

The standardization process may be "paper-driven" or "community-driven". In both cases, standardization is indispensable but not sufficient. Let me recall that the foundation for the human-centric global village is just the Internet Protocol defined in 1981 and derived from the academic abstract knowledge and practitioners’ concrete experience. It is worth stressing that it was published as an open-access document (RFC 791) and it has not been deprecated yet.

The open-access Object-Oriented Internet (OOI) umbrella project targets multi-vendor plug-and-produce machines interoperability scenarios targeting all aspects of the machine-centric global village concept aimed at providing reusable deliverables, training, best practice rules, prototyping, compliance testing and dissemination of valuable results.

I am a researcher who is passionate about applying knowledge and experience in building a machine-centric global village. Let’s build it with you and for you. To join our effort and create an organization context I have launched the Object-Oriented Internet Partnership Program.

Consider joining Object-Oriented Internet Partnership Program. Your participation is needed to make sure the work will continue as expected.

Why follow Object-Oriented Internet

To make real progress, I propose to focus on leveraging:

  • well-known concepts, e.g. Object-Oriented Programming (OOP), Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Data-Oriented Architecture (DOA), cloud computing, etc.
  • existing and emerging standards, e.g. OPC UA, AMQP, MQTT, etc.
  • academic knowledge and practitioners experience
  • available human-centric global village interoperability platforms, e.g. GitHub, WordPress, Research Gate, LinkedIn, Twitter, Gitter, etc.
  • loosely coupled research and development team of direct contributors

and contribute to the following call to actions

  • brainstorm ideas
  • collect requirements
  • collect existing solutions and deliverables
  • provide proof of concept
  • provide deliverables
  • create video curses
  • work on eBook
  • build up a loosely coupled team

Current list of projects covered by the OOI Partnership Program you may find here Pinned projects. There is a very important tool addressing all aspects of the OPC UA Information Model design and Address Space deployment. The tool Address Space Model Designer is maintained as the open-source public project on the GitHub. To get more visit the article OPC UA Makes Machine to Machine Meaningful Interoperability Possible.

Why follow me

I have 35+ years of experience in designing and deploying highly distributed applications having managed 100+ innovative projects for industry including aviation, heat engineering, power engineering, and mining. I am the author of

  • Process Observer concept and implementation
  • CommServer OPC based communication software family for the management and optimization of data transfer
  • SmartFactory workflow management system

For 15 years I have been OPC Foundation active member involved in a vast variety of projects related to the OPC Unified Architecture.

I am engaged in many research projects as a university teacher and scientist. I am the author of 40+ publications, lectures, presentations and training sessions. I have a degree as a Master Engineer in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Lodz and a Ph.D. in Process Control Engineering and Robotics.

I am the founder and Executive Director of CAS.

How to be involved

To be involved you may

  • join the OOI Partnership Program – visit the article How to be involved to follow up
  • directly contribute as an active member of the OOI community – check out the rules here CONTRIBUTING.
  • provide reciprocal feedback as the end-users of adopted deliverables by email, on Gitter, GitHub, etc.

How to be rewarded

As a result of participation in the OOI Partnership Program**, direct contribution or using the deliverables as the end-user you

  • can directly influence further development of the OOI prioritizing the tasks backlog
  • will access OOI documentation and deliverables
  • may use the deliverables in commercial products
  • may distribute the deliverables including source code
  • will have opportunities to join working groups, online discussion groups, and collaborations for new technology initiatives
  • will have access to and direct contribution to new publications
  • will make use of the OOI logo
  • will have the opportunity to list your products in the online product guide
  • will have the opportunity to announce new solutions and products online
  • will have the opportunity to be listed in the Acknowledgement section of publication and project deliverables
  • will have the opportunity to support the Open Access to a manuscript publication that enables unrestricted public access to the article
Advertisement

OPC UA Makes Machine to Machine Meaningful Interoperability Possible

I4.0, IoT, M2M, OPC UA November 30, 2019 1 Comment

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has provided society with a vast variety of distributed applications including but not limited to the meaningful Machine to Machine (M2M) communication targeting distributed mobile applications in the context of new emerging disciplines, i.e. Industry 4.0 (I4.0) and Internet of Things (IoT).  All applications designed atop of network communication can be grouped as follows:

  • human-centric – applications where the information origin or ultimate destination is an operator
  • machine-centric – applications where information production, consumption, networking, and processing are achieved entirely without human interaction

A typical human-centric approach is web service supporting, for example, online bank account management. It is essential that, in this case, any uncertainty and necessity to make a decision can be relaxed by human interaction. Coordination of multi robots behavior in a work-cell is a machine-centric example. It is crucial that, in this case, any human interaction is impractical or even impossible. This interconnection scenario requires the machine to machine communication (M2M) demanding multi-vendor devices integration. It is a real challenge if the mentioned machines are provided by a vast variety of vendors. Machines that by design are capable of being integrated into an industrial process without programming are marked Plug and Produce (PaP) ready. This approach requires applying an accepted by the community international standard, i.e. OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA).

The open-source Object-Oriented Internet project targets multi-vendor plug-and-produce interoperability scenario to provide generic solutions for publishing and updating information in a context that can be used to describe and discover this information adopting well known and widely used concept coined as Object-Oriented Programming. The OOI is implemented based on the OPC Unified Architecture that is recognized by the community as the industrial integration standard that fulfills the above-mentioned requirements.The parts interoperability implies that engaging the possibility of exchanging information over underlying communication infrastructure (network for short) we shall expect that this conversation of machines is meaningful. In other words, there must be a shared understanding of the mutually processed data. It is possible only and only if all communicating parties use the same semantic-context (rules to express data meaning), i.e. the same syntax and semantics. The syntax rules answer the question of how the bitstreams exchanged over the network shall be formatted. To make two parties interoperable both must use the same semantic rules to assign the information (meaning) to bitstreams (data) exchanged over the wire. The real challenge – we are facing – is how to independently produce the machines to guarantee that they are plug and produce ready. While producing the machines in compliance with the OPC UA this issue is relaxed by applying the following OPC UA standardized concepts

  • Information Model – all about how to design a formal but mutually meaningfully and shareable description of the considered process
  • Address Space – all about how to instantiate and expose to the network a life replica of the process providing real-time data according to the mentioned above formal description

To get more details about this process you may visit the section Information Models Development of my ebook Object-Oriented Internet.

If you have concerns that the process is too sophisticated, requires specialized knowledge and skills don’t give up. Fortunately, there is a free tool addressing all aspects of the OPC UA Information Model design and Address Space deployment. The tool Address Space Model Designer is maintained as the open-source public project on the GitHub.

Let’s join our effort on the GitHub Address Space Model Designer (ASMD); GitHub Open Source Software. Any kind of support is welcome.

Read More