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Model driven development of distributed control applications

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Abstract

Control systems rely heavily on the software that is used to implement them. However, current trends in software engineering are not fully exploited in the development process of complex control systems. In this paper, an approach for the model driven development of distributed control systems (DCSs) is presented. The proposed approach that greatly simplifies the development process adopts the function block construct introduced by the IEC 61499 standard and supports the automatic generation of implementation models for many different execution environments. It favours the deployment and re-deployment of distributed control applications and provides an infrastructure for the transparent exploitation of current software engineering practices. GME, a meta-modelling tool, was utilized to develop Archimedes, an IEC-compliant prototype engineering support system. Specific model-to-model transformers have been developed to automate the transformation of FB-based design models to CORBA-component-model based implementation models to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach.

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Acknowledgement

We gratefully thank George Doukas for his support in the development of Archimedes ESS.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Patras, 26500, Patras, Greece

    K. Thramboulidis

  2. Computer Engineering & Informatics, University of Patras, 26500, Patras, Greece

    D. Perdikis & S. Kantas

Authors
  1. K. Thramboulidis
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  2. D. Perdikis
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  3. S. Kantas
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Correspondence to K. Thramboulidis.

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Thramboulidis, K., Perdikis, D. & Kantas, S. Model driven development of distributed control applications. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 33, 233–242 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-006-0455-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-006-0455-0

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