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Nowadays factories are highly flexible and adaptive industrial environments backed by digital models. To ease the interaction of human workers with these environments and represent hidden information and contexts, we propose a large-scale extended reality system for industrial settings. The huge application potential is demonstrated with various interaction methods like trigger zones, guide paths, ergonomics guidance, and restricted areas.

MRI and associated contrast agent administration to visualize the vasculature prove valuable for planning surgical interventions and can reduce the operative time by helping to locate internal structures of interest for the operation. However, the visual representation of soft tissues deviates due to differences in body posture, in water and fat content, and in their gravitational displacement. In this paper, we present a novel approach for calculating deformations of abdominal fat tissue and vascular structures in MRI scans. The underlying elastic registration model is based on a current abdominal RGB-D scan as a surface-matching target. We demonstrate the pipeline on Dixon MRI and RGB-D scans acquired from ten patients with a diagnosis of breast cancer and a treatment plan including mastectomy. Results indicate that the proposed system enhances the surgeon's spatial perception of the abdominal vasculature and improves the accuracy of blood vessel locations shown in MRI scans.

Industrial areas like manufacturing, logistics and power systems require highly flexible and adaptable control solutions in order to fulfill future requirements. An industrial automation system has to provide technologies, concepts and mechanisms allowing the adaption of control logic during operation. Proper engineering approaches as well as execution environments with dynamic reconfiguration capabilities are needed to turn this vision into reality. This article provides an overview of applying the IEC 61499 reference model for distributed automation as basis for a standard-compliant reconfigurable method in industrial environments. It covers the modeling and engineering of reconfiguration applications and their execution on distributed embedded controllers using IEC 61499. This approach significantly increases engineering efficiency and reuse in component-based design of industrial automation and control applications. A special focus of this contribution is the discussion of implemented industrial use cases from the manufacturing, robotics and power systems domain.

Industrial areas like manufacturing, logistics and power systems require highly flexible and adaptable control solutions in order to fulfill future requirements. An industrial automation system has to provide technologies, concepts and mechanisms allowing the adaption of control logic during operation. Proper engineering approaches as well as execution environments with dynamic reconfiguration capabilities are needed to turn this vision into reality. This article provides an overview of applying the IEC 61499 reference model for distributed automation as basis for a standard-compliant reconfigurable method in industrial environments. It covers the modeling and engineering of reconfiguration applications and their execution on distributed embedded controllers using IEC 61499. This approach significantly increases engineering efficiency and reuse in component-based design of industrial automation and control applications. A special focus of this contribution is the discussion of implemented industrial use cases from the manufacturing, robotics and power systems domain.

The aim of this paper is to describe a model-driven design approach for Industrial Automation and Control Systems (IACS). This approach is characterised by the transformation of domain specific engineering models to a central automation component model and the automatic code generation for varioius automation platforms. A central point of this work is the development and discussion of the domain specific model to automation component model transformation which is discussed in this paper. The work behind this approach is being developed in the MEDEIA project funded by the European Commission in the FP7.

Industrial robots, that are designed to carry out operations fast, repeatedly and accurately, usually have been fixed to one physical location and manipulate objects on the assembly line. However, for several industrial applications, particularly for the applications involving large part manufacturing such as aerospace industry or shipbuilding industry, large parts are worked on in a stationary production cell. In such a production environment, specialized, stationary robotic systems are not economical and a mobile manipulator is desirable. In this paper, we present the systematic architecture designed for a mobile manipulator working together with human co-workers in an unstructured environment. We detail hardware specification of robot as well as software architectures under consideration of safety, efficiency and load balance issues of industrial robotics, in particular for the aerospace manufacturing industry. A configurable graphical user interface has also been presented to test and validate our system design. Two commonly existing exemplary tasks in aerospace manufacturing industry - sealant applying and visual inspection, have been discussed within this systematic architecture.

The integration of functional independent modules into distributed control systems is a complex problem and often leads to high development time. Using the industrial standard IEC 61499, an open basis to force component interoperability is already given. However, a common weakness of many function block (FB) runtime environments can be located in the fact that FBs need to be compiled statically into the runtime. This leads to time consuming compilation cycles during FB development, due to frequent changes. We present a dynamic FB type library, which enables dynamic loading and interpreting of scriptable FB types during runtime startup. Benchmark tests underpin the applicability of this approach for rapid FB development and building project specific FB runtimes.

In order to cope with the upcoming demands for flexible adaptive production system a new architecture for industrial automation systems has been introduced called IEC 61499. Up to now no monitoring and debugging infrastructure has been defined for IEC 61499 although, this is a key feature for industrial automation systems as break downs and unexpected standstills needs to be solved immediately. To improve this situation this work evaluates whether existing IEC 61499 means can be used for monitoring and debugging. As existing means are either not powerful enough or not suitable for small embedded control devices a new monitoring and debugging approach is developed. The developed infrastructure has been implemented as part of the 4DIAC open source framework. Testing the new monitoring and infrastructure showed that it is capable of fulfilling the requirements and that it greatly improves distributed control system development.

A higher flexibility and adaptability in industrial automation systems is an important requirement which has to be addressed in industrial systems today. New software architectures for the corresponding control environments allowing to develop modular and reusable code, are necessary. The IEC 61499 standard was especially developed for distributed industrial automation systems addressing such needs but its realization and the provision of corresponding software tools can be cost intensive. Using open source developments can provide helpful benefits. This paper therefore investigates the usage of the IEC 61499 compliant open source environment 4DIAC for developing modular and reusable control code. Moreover, future improvements are identified in order to enhance its usability for industrial automation applications.

LOCOBOT (www.locobot.eu) is a European project funded in the first call of the "Factory of the future" in FP 7 (FoF.NMP.2010-1). LOCOBOT addresses strategic objective ― Plug-and-Produce components for adaptive control. The 'Factories of the Future' public-private partnership (PPP) is a joint initiative of the European Commission and the private sector to promote research in advanced manufacturing across Europe. Launched in early 2009, this major European initiative has embarked upon its first 25 research projects which will achieve their final results in 2013 and 2014. 5 of these 25 projects are related to the Topic of robotics and LOCOBOT is one of this 5 projects. LOCOBOT is a system which reaches above and beyond what is currently available for those working in the automotive industry: it incorporates a flexible robotic assistant platform to support and increase manual production processes, as well as the engineering tools required for its setup. Further, this project aims to improve the ergonomics in industrial production processes.

The configuration of communication networks is still an extensive part of the engineering process especially within heterogeneous and hybrid networks. Reducing the engineering time by an automatic configuration of the communication networks would not only save time and costs it would also allow the engineer to concentrate more on the design of the automation applications and processes. Therefore this paper offers a concept to describe networked industrial automation systems especially the communication requirements requested by the control application as well as the restrictions given by the hardware equipment. It also presents how to integrate these descriptions within a framework for the calculation of possible communication paths.

Industrial automation and control systems are composed out of logically interconnected but physically separated software components. Subcomponents of such systems often require diverse communication links with different protocols and specific quality of service (QoS) constraints. These QoS requirements for communication have an important impact to the overall system design and must be considered during the engineering of automation and control systems. This specific task has not been considered by model driven engineering approaches so far. This paper shows an approach for model-driven configuration of heterogeneous and hybrid communication networks in the field of industrial automation and control systems. On the basis of a communication model which is built from an application model and a hardware model we describe the mapping and routing of the communication with specific QoS.

The automation of plants and machines is becoming more and more complex due to the extensive usage of intelligent field devices as for instance programmable actuators and sensors. The graphical programming languages used are typically for the automation domain, and control applications tend to be become increasingly complex which results in higher engineering costs for establishment and maintenance. The new IEC 61499 standard for distributed control systems provides an interesting engineering concept called subapplications. This concept has, in principle, the potential to provide a cost-effective solution for industrial automation applications, but is currently only being used in a few instances. The goal of this paper is to introduce a simpler, more effective, engineering approach to structure large scale distributed control programs based on a hierarchical plant structure model together with IEC 61499 subapplications.

In this paper a concept for modeling flexible mechatronical based assembly systems will be described. For the development of such assembly systems, modular mechatronic components are being applied. To test the requirements and behavior of the various components required in an assembly system, a library of these mechatronical components is developed. These components are being programmed using a distributed control approach. The work discussed here is being applied in the FP6 Integrated Project PISA funded by the European Commission.

This paper intends to provide a basis for the discussion and development of an Open Source Initiative for a ldquoFramework for distributed industrial automation and control (4DIAC) based on the new IEC 61499 standard. The general understanding of the authors is that an open source strategy is an adequate means for pushing current developments within the industrial automation domain and bringing together interested partners to focus and unite their concerns on a distributed and flexible automation environment. One main point is also to provide a stable basis for industrial appliances and further research into next generation distributed automation and control systems based on the IEC 61499 standard. A look at the current status of the developments for IEC 61499 shows, that these targets may not have been attained. In the opinion of the authors, the targets presented above need a common and publicly available reference framework. Therefore the general idea of the 4DIAC initiative is to provide such an open framework for the IEC 61499 standard that gives the opportunity to establish an automation and control environment based on the three main targets, portability, configurability and interoperability.

The aim of this paper is to describe a multi-domain model-driven embedded systems design approach which is applicable to the domain of complex Industrial Automation and Control Systems (IACS). The special requirements of the industrial automation sector are taken into account by this novel approach, utilizing existing model-driven techniques. This is currently being developed in the FP7 Embedded Systems Design project MEDEIA funded by the European Commission.

In today's globalized markets the manufacturing industry in traditional high-wage countries highly depends on flexible and automated manufacturing systems to remain competitive. State-of-the-art industrial control and automation systems do not sufficiently solve the problem of downtimeless reconfiguration of control applications. This paper presents an approach for structured modeling of controlled reconfigurations of control applications based on IEC 61499. The reconfiguration process itself with this paper defined as evolution allows close interaction with applications or physical processes while modeling knowledge from control engineering is reused for evolution engineering. An example points out the evolution engineering process as well as the benefits of this new approach.

Publisher Summary The manufacturing and production industry will only survive in a more and more globalized world if they react fast and flexible to new market and customer demands. To achieve the postulated flexibility, support for reconfiguration is necessary. Distributed automation systems built out of mechatronic components help coping with these demands. This chapter presents a new architecture for the integrated modeling of control and reconfiguration control applications for such systems, which results in a modular advanced engineering environment for distributed and reconfigurable Industrial Automation and Control Systems (IACS) based on the International Electrochemical Commission (IEC) 61499 standard. A review of existing engineering tools based on the IEC 61499 standard shows a lack especially in engineering support for communication and for reconfiguration control applications. Therefore, this chapter illustrates a framework for an integrated engineering environment. A first prototypical implementation of this tool is also presented.

Current trends such as shorter product lifecycles, reduced time-to-market and mass-customisation require new paradigms and approaches for production lines and machines. In the long term, production and manufacturing companies will only be able to survive in the face of increasing globalisation if they can react flexibly and quickly to changing customer and market demands. New paradigms and approaches are waiting to fulfil these requirements, but their implementation requires completely new technologies. Reconfiguration, both at machine (physical) and control technology (logical) level is a promising candidate to achieve the flexibility required by these paradigms by technical means. This makes a shift from centrally controlled, highly interlinked, and often tightly interlocked production systems to distributed, modular, collaborative components essential. This paper describes the distributed control concept for a 6-DOF reconfigurable robot arm based on the IEC 61499 reference model as a demonstration platform for reconfigurable approaches.