Engineering of next generation cyber-physical automation system architectures

Abstract

Cyber-Physical-Systems (CPS) enable flexible and reconfigurable realization of automation system architectures, utilizing distributed control architectures with non-hierarchical modules linked together through different communication systems. Several control system architectures have been developed and validated in the past years by research groups. However, there is still a lack of implementation in industry. The intention of this work is to provide a summary of current alternative control system architectures that could be applied in industrial automation domain as well as a review of their commonalities. The aim is to point out the differences between the traditional centralized and hierarchical architectures to discussed ones, which rely on decentralized decision-making and control. Challenges and impacts that industries and engineers face in the process of adopting decentralized control architectures are discussed, analysing the obstacles for industrial acceptance and the new necessary interdisciplinary engineering skills. Finally, an outlook of possible mitigation and migration actions required to implement the decentralized control architectures is addressed.The authors would like to thank the European Commission for the support, and the partners of the EU Horizon 2020 project PERFoRM (2016b) for the fruitful discussions. The PERFoRM project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 680435.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio