O³neida Workgroup on Execution Models of IEC 61499 Function Block Applications - October 26, 2006

Introduction

Following the initiative of O³neida members and supported by the Board of Directors, o3neida is announcing a new activity on the development of Compliance Profiles on Execution Models of IEC 61499 Applications.

The IEC 61499 function block standard has been finally adopted and published by the International Electrotechnical Commission. However, early attempts of implementation by industry and numerous research works in academia have revealed a number of 'semantic loopholes' - i.e. incomplete definitions of how function blocks must be interpreted during their execution. This creates a room for multiple interpretations, which, in turn, shrinks the portability potential of IEC 61499 applications and hinders IEC 61499 adoption by industry.

The IEC 61499 standard has a built-in mechanism of answering such 'incompleteness' problems known as 'Compliance profiles' which, according to the Part 4 of IEC 61499, specify the features of IEC 61499-1 and 61499-2 to be implemented in order to promote the following attributes of IEC 61499-based systems, devices and software tools:

• interoperability of devices from multiple suppliers;
• portability of software between software tools of multiple suppliers; and
• configurability of devices from multiple vendors by software tools of multiple suppliers.

Several compliance profiles may be necessary to provide for implementations. At this stage the following issues seem to be necessary to address in such a compliance profile:

1. Execution of a basic function block; Algorithms.
2. Execution of a composite function block;
3. Scheduling of function blocks in resource and of resources in a device;
4. Execution of Service Interface Function Blocks;

Workgroup

A workgroup has been formed from O³neida members and invited experts which is investigating the completeness of the IEC 61499 execution model, and which will develop complete models and will propose them as compliance profile(s).

The workgroup consists of two parts:

• The group of document developers, working on the regular basis on the documents' development;
• The group of evaluators and assessors, providing feedback on the periodically released drafts;

O³neida members are encouraged to volunteer to either of these groups!
There are now over 40 members active within the working group. These members come from North America, Europe and Asia.

Work timeline and workgroup management
The following milestones are in place:

• Step 1. Collection of information: collect published and unpublished materials on execution model of function blocks;
• Step 2. Classify problems;
• Step 3. Develop compliance profile structure;
• Step 4. Propose solutions addressing the problems;
• Step 5. Vote for the most appropriate solutions and release compliance profile drafts for assessment by industrial supporters;
• Step 6. Release version one of the compliance profile.
• Step 7. Revise and update the compliance profile as needed;
The first version release can be expected by mid-2007.

The Workgroup's activity will be coordinated by two coordinators rotating once in several months. The role of coordinators will be to accomplish the tasks of the work plan. The coordinators for the initial period of the workgroup's operation are:

• Valeriy Vyatkin, The University of Auckland: v.vyatkin@auckland.ac.nz
• Christoph Sünder, Technical University of Vienna: suender@acin.tuwien.ac.at

Communication between taskforce members will be via:

a) e-mail correspondence and Skype;
b) data exchange through O³neida FTP server;
c) meetings; d) the O³neida compliance profile working group collaboration platform.

Special session at INDIN 2008

A special session on the IEC61499 Execution Models at the 6th IEEE Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN 2008, July, 2008, Daejeon, Korea) is seen as an important contribution for achieving the goals of the work plan. The session will be structured according to well-focused topics to be allocated among the taskforce members. Several contributions on the same topic will be encouraged, and a research group can co-author more papers. Hopefully the overall contributions will be balanced among the various contributors. The conference deadlines (draft submission, reviewing, final submission and presentation) will help to structure the taskforce work and integrate it to the academic and research routine, thus not asking for extra resources.

Business model

The participants of the meeting realize that the work on the compliance profile development is time consuming and is not funded by any existing project. The proposed model of operation is to contribute the efforts and resources of organizations represented by taskforce members. O3neida will be the official owner of the work result. O³neida management will propose a business model on commercialisation of this work results and on rewarding the involved parties. Please contact current group coordinators if you wish to participate in the workgroup or if you require more information. The coordinators' contacts are:

Christoph Sünder
Agile Control Group
AUTOMATION & CONTROL INSTITUTE
VIENNA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
Gusshausstrasse 27-29 | 376. 1040 VIENNA,Austria
Tel. +43 (0)1 58801 - 37682 (GMT+1)
Fax. +43 (0)1 58801 - 37698
suender@acin.tuwien.ac.at
www.acin.tuwien.ac.at

Valeriy Vyatkin
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
The University of Auckland
Private bag 92019
Auckland, New Zealand
Tel. +64-9-3737599 ext.89437 (GMT+12)
Fax: +64-9-3737461
v.vyatkin@auckland.ac.nz
www.ece.auckland.ac.nz/~vyatkin/