The manufacturing industry nowadays uses a high degree of automation that contributes significantly to its commercial success. Set-up of an automation system is usually very expensive and only pays off by amortization of costs over its life span. Shorter product life cycles and increasing personalization of products, which are the results of the so-called fourth industrial revolution, endanger ...

The development of new embedded algorithms for automation and control of industrial equipment usually requires the use of real-time testing. However, the equipment required is often expensive, which means that such tests are often not viable. The objective of this work was therefore to develop an embedded platform for the distributed real-time simulation of dynamic systems. This platform, calle...

This paper describes an innovative approach to life-long learning as implemented in a large Industrial Cooperation Project between the USA and the Republic of China (ROC). This project was sponsored under the current Industrial Automation and eBusiness Development plan by the Industrial Automation and eBusiness Steering Committee for the ROC, and helps enable and accelerate Taiwan’s transition ...

Ethernet-based fieldbuses continuously penetrate industrial automation and many of them have been standardized (PROFINET, EtherCAT, SERCOS III, etc.). This fact fosters utilization of established Internetworking technologies, such as TCP/IP protocol suites and web services with the aim of widening of the communication scope and seamless interconnection with higher levels of industrial automatio...

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are gradually adopted in the industrial world due to their advantages over wired networks. In addition to saving cabling costs, WSNs widen the realm of environments feasible for monitoring. They thus add sensing and acting capabilities to objects in the physical world and allow for communication among these objects or with services in the future Internet. However...

Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA) is often named as a prospective enabler for future automation systems integrations, example envisioned in the German Initiative Industrie 4.0. The DLR OPC UA Modelica library connects with world. There are two main goals: First, server capabilities emulating communication interface of (physical) hardware components order to create compo...