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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.

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.

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.