Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Zero-SWARM (ZERO-ENABLING SMART NETWORKED CONTROL FRAMEWORK FOR AGILE CYBER PHYSICAL PRODUCTION SYSTEMS OF SYSTEMS)
Berichtszeitraum: 2022-06-01 bis 2023-11-30
The project includes 3 nodes (north, center and south) with industrial test facilities from previous public/private investments co/creating with reputable industry players. Aligned with the technical activities, Zero-SWARM includes a tailored engagement program towards a wide audience, including collaboration with Digital Innovation Hubs and key initiatives in Europe. It allows them to be the pioneer of the Zero-SWARM technologies, establishing an impact pathway even after the project end. Zero-SWARM puts strong emphasis on developing various learning materials to promote skill development of talented workforces with minimum efforts in prominent twin transformation, which will strongly contribute to build up European leadership in sustainable data driven manufacturing.
Moreover, the project has been tackling the problem of creating a run-time information continuum enabling awareness in the industrial domain. This involves the use of multiple technologies such as:
• An edge-cloud data infrastructure that allows trustable data exchange between application scenarios in the industrial domain combining;
• An Asset Administration Shell and digital twins of the manufacturing equipment,
• Distributed stream computing from OT to IT,
• Predictive models of intelligent agents, and integration of federated learning services.
In the scope of 5G telecommunications, the project has analyzed the enhancements of 5G Non-Public Network communications and has found the methodology for simple and fast provisioning, operation and diagnosis of 5G private networks. Furthermore, the project has defined 5G-edge devices, integrating local sensor networks into existing infrastructure with added computing power for application-specific data preprocessing and is in the process of extending and refining 5G-ACIA specifications.
The project has been developing standards-based toolkits for the life-cycle management of real-time CPSoS. Our focus has been on:
• Extension of the IEC-61499 runtime with discovery and self-declaration functionalities for reconfiguration
• Integration between IEC-61499 and Edge Computing framework within WP5 and WP4,
• Development of an AI-dedicated version of the toolchain for field practitioners,
• Development of cyber-security methodologies and solutions for the OT-IT connection.
The technologies developed in the project will trialed in 10 real life industry scenarios defined, split on nodes across North, Centre and South Europe.
Last but not least, the project has developed the official website, the social media channels, a community and a business model on how to exploit the project’s KERs. Moreover, the projecthas prepared an Expression of Interest, which will go public in the next weeks in order to allow external stakeholders to initially test the Zero-SWARM technologies.
The work performed by the Zero-SWARM consortium is reflected to twenty seven deliverables produced by the project.
While the project is now entering its’ final stage, where the technologies developed within it will be demonstrated and results beyond SotA are expected.The following list summarizes some initial beyond SotA results:
• A reference Architecture aligning of I4.0 RAMI, IIoT and reference standards, was proposed.
• A reference cybersecurity architecture, aligned with the project architecture was proposed. It is based on standards such as IEC 62443 and ISO/IEC TS 19249.
• A novel Public Network Integrated Non-Public Networks (PNI-NPN) deployment option along with a new scheduling scheme were proposed to facilitate the needs of adapting 5G in the I4.0 context.
• The Zero-SWARM Distributed stream computing within the Edge-Cloud continnum Architecture was designed which will allow seamless exchange and exposure of information for AI based applications enabling real time decision making.
• IEC 61499 platform was extended to allow Dynamic Device and Environment Recognition, Real-time Reconfiguration and Dynamic Resource allocation
• A plugin for IEC 61499 IDE was designed to allow embedding AI functions and offers best practices for developing Function Blocks within the IEC 61499 development environment.