International Scientific Journals
of Scientific Technical Union of Mechanical Engineering "Industry 4.0"

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) integrate computing, networking and physical dynamics and are characterized by a high degree of heterogeneity and parallelism, with high dimensionality and complexity, including a variety of decision-making capabilities and control logic. Modeling and simulation of cyber-physical systems are considered important stages in the design, development and operation of CPS and their components. The main aim of the paper is to describe and analyze the evolution of agent based approach in the field of CPS and to define the basic requirements to the agent based systems regarding CPS. Based on O-MaSE methodology a software process model for agent based development of CPS is proposed. The approach includes the creation of 10 models reflecting various aspects and functionality of the CPS. The suggested approach is analyzed in terms of meeting the basic requirements for agent-based systems, imposed by the peculiarities of cyber-physical systems and fundamental requirements for their introducing, such as flexibility/changeability, reliability, reconfigurability, adaptability/agility and dependability.

Monitoring and control of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) have many challenges related to the heterogeneous environment, the high degree of interaction between the components and the high requirements for functionality and scale. The paper presents an analysis of the state of the art in this area and proposes and analyses different combined approaches for control of CPS based on IEC-61499 standard. The approaches are divided in two groups. The first group of approaches combines IEC-61499 standard with advanced methods of software engineering, such as formal methods and model-driven development, based on UML/SysML. The second group uses other standards as IEC- 61512 and PLCopen to be combined with IEC-61499 standard in order to improve the development lifecycle of cyber-physical systems.

The strategic initiative Industry 4.0 implies integration of Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS), Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing, leading to what is called “smart factory”. The lack of theoretical foundation and methodologies for development of CPPS creates barriers that may hamper the adoption, commercialization, and market success of the new CPPS applications. Standardization and digitalization are at the heart of the methodologies for developing intelligent cyber-physical production systems. OPC UA is the only recommended communication standard within the RAMI reference architecture. Here comes the main purpose of the paper to analyze OPC UA in respect to the information model creation and measures to ensure security of applications. An important place in the paper is devoted to the specification of standardized information models of other organizations, such as those of the ISA-95 (IEC-62264).

The strategic initiative Industry 4.0 implies integration of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing, leading to what is called “smart factory”. The lack of theoretical foundation and methodologies creates barriers that may hamper the adoption, commercialization, and market success of the new CPS applications. The reference frameworks and architectures support the analysis and specification of domains, and facilitates the unification of methods used by various disciplines such as industrial engineering, control theory, communication and information technology, thus making possible their combined use. The paper presents an analysis of the benefits and use of reference frameworks and architectures in the development of CPS. Standardized meta-models of reference frameworks and architectures are presented. Particular attention is paid to the NIST reference framework and architecture of CPS, with a view to establishing a methodology for development of Cyber-Physical Production Systems.

The Industry 4.0 initiative imposes new requirements on cyber-physical systems in terms of interoperability, response time, communication capabilities, and more. A major approach to addressing these requirements is through the development and use of standard reference frameworks, architectures and models as well as the widespread and joint application of open industry standards. The aim of the article is to analyze the use of standards under the Fourth Industrial Revolution as well as to present and analyze some of the most applied standards in the field of monitoring and control of cyber-physical systems, such as AutomationML, OPC-UA, IEC-61449, IEC-61512. The reference architecture RAMI 4.0 was used to establish relationships and interactions between them.

The Industry 4.0 initiative poses great challenges to the world, countries and companies connected with the provided digital transformation and the new intelligent technologies in all areas of the industry. This requires the development and follow-up of a national strategy for the adoption and implementation of Industry 4.0. It is important in this case to assess the Industry 4.0 readiness of each country for transformation and change. The main aim of the paper is to present, analyse and compare some of the most promised existing approaches for calculation of Industry 4.0 readiness at national level. Some results are presented and compared.

Monitoring and control of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) have many challenges related to the heterogeneous environment, the high degree of interaction between the components and the high requirements for functionality and scale. The paper presents an analysis of the state of the art in this area and proposes an approach for monitoring and control of CPS through the integration of the IEC-61499 based models for distributed control systems and the IEC-61512 standard providing domain specific models for design and control of batch production processes as well as the Signal- Interpreted Petri Nets used for the purpose of formal specification and verification of unit procedures. The approach is illustrated with an example of CPS for loading a batch tank and mixing of liquid flow.

In order to achieve its goal in using intelligent adaptive and predictive technical systems with self-X functions and cognitive information processing in continuous interaction with environment, the Industry 4.0 initiative implies integration of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing leading to what is called "smart factory". This, in turn, faces the CPS with new challenges in terms of increasing the degree of distribution, autonomy, mobility, communication and security of the systems and their components, as well as expanding their functionality in the direction of data analytics, information and knowledge extraction, and increasing their intelligence. This paper discusses and analyses the CPS in the context of Industry 4.0 and the main trends in the development of process automation and control in order to suggest an appropriate and advanced agent based approach for development of CPS for process control. The proposed approach is based on using the following standards – from one side the IEC61499 Standard for agent specification and from other side the IEC62264 and IEC 61512 Standards for defining the different kind of agents in the control system. The presented approaches are illustrated with a partly presented example of development of Injector control system. Finally some conclusions are made.

Enterprise interoperability is the ability of disparate and diverse information and control systems to work together efficiently towards mutually beneficial common goals. Some of the main tasks for achieving enterprise interoperability are connected with data and knowledge access and sharing and by use of model transformation. In this paper are presented and discussed several model transformations between different Technological Spaces: RDB, UML and OWL in order to enable ontology-based access to different models of enterprise data. At the core of the approach is the usage of reference models, based on the standard for enterprise integration ISO/IEC 62264.

In recent years the use of computer technique and information technology in the domain of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) has been increasing significantly. For successful and efficient development of ambient intelligence systems and their components a new approach is needed. The Model Driven Development (MDD) is an innovative approach for development of different software applications using models at different levels of abstraction and applying model transformation to code generation. In order to satisfy the basic requirements to the developed AmI, in the proposed approach, the MDD, based on Model Driven Architecture (MDA), is directed to combine the use of agents as basic elements of the system and to model the internal and external communications in the system, based on the concept of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Such a way, the paper proposes a layered modeling framework for model driven development of agent based AmI systems with service oriented architecture. The deployment of the software on hardware resources is also part of the software process model. Finally some conclusions are made.

One of the main problems of biomedical informatics in the effort to increase its contribution in knowledge retrieval and decision making is the integration of ever-increasing amounts of information and data from multiple heterogeneous sources and domains – clinical, medical, biological etc. The paper proposes an ontology based approach for integration of biomedical data and information using the Linked Open Data vocabularies and a D2RQ-mapped database. A simple example of semantic integration of heterogeneous biomedical and health data sources is given.

Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) systems as central information and data hub play a very important role for an easy and seamless transition to Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications. IIoT is mainly used in the context of Industry 4.0, that pursues the organization and management of value-added processes in the manufacturing industry with means of digitalization. The main aim of the proposed paper is to suggest some modifications to the IEC 62264 based models and architectures using RAMI 4.0 reference architecture in order to follow the basic principles of IoT and achieving the main advantages of IIoT.