Distributed Automation and Control Systems

Contact:
Dipl.-Ing. Martin Melik-Merkumians
Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing.Dr.sc.techn. Georg Schitter

The engineering effort of production systems is continuously increasing, where the increasing cost for developing and programming the control system already exceeds the total costs of all mechanic components and assembly. The research field for distributed automation and control systems works towards novel methods, in order to reduce the development effort of production systems while simultaneously increasing their flexibility and system reliability. In our research we focus on innovative control methods for autonomous cooperative base units. Future automation systems will be assembled from these base units flexibly and independently. Because of their cooperative behavior, the base components adapt themselves to the overall system to meet the requirements of the product specification. Therefore the configuration effort gets minimized as all system components adapt themselves while acknowledging the other cooperative base units. The control system reacts quickly and autonomously to any change of the production conditions (e.g., a new product, changes in the material flow, or a failure of a subsystem in the manufacturing process), adapting itself fully automatically in order to guarantee optimal throughput under the new production conditions.

Here, we investigate in particular control systems that can be reconfigured in real-time, knowledge-based software agents, model-driven software development, automatic code generation for control programs, integrated condition monitoring of production systems, and virtual plant commissioning. A main focus of this research is the development of generic solutions that allow for the first time the full reconfiguration of the production system, while simultaneously reducing design complexity and improving reliability. A control platform recently developed at ACIN resulted in September 2010 in the worldwide first successful implementation of autonomous cooperative base units in the field-level of production systems. This achievement is demonstrated on the example of a manufacturing logistic system.

These innovative control approaches are the fundamental basis for flexible production systems, which constitute without doubt a prerequisite for and the future of industrial automation technology.