Objective
The objective of this project is the development of a toolset for integration of Open, high performance, dependable, distributed fault tolerant control systems in reduced timescales and at lower cost. A major inhibiting factor to the adoption of Open distributed control systems is that tool support is proprietary to a manufacturer's products. This makes integration of systems using Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components from different manufacturers difficult. The FLEXICON toolset will address management of requirements, management of complexity, performance assessment via multidisciplinary co-simulation prior to implementation and management of component obsolescence for applications with a 10-30 year lifetime. Two distributed control systems demonstrations will be used to provide a focus for the work; a heat treatment line and marine gas turbine engine/waterjet propulsion.
Work description:
Rapid advances have been made in Commercial Off-The-Shelf Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), PC-based boards and embedded intelligence in localised smart controllers, smart sensors and smart actuators. Great opportunities exist to produce high performance, dependable distributed systems, however, the key element that is missing is software tool support for systems integration. Many proprietary tools exist for programming specific manufacturers products, however, code cannot be reused on another manufacturer's equipment. This is currently the major inhibiting factor to the uptake of Open Distributed Systems.
The objective of FLEXICON is to provide an integrated suite of tools to support all the development life-cycle phases: simulation/modelling, development and implementation, addressing:
- Management of requirements Management of complexity;
- Performance assessment during design via multi-disciplinary co-simulation;
- Management of system component obsolescence.
The project work is organised in three distinct phases:
1) In the first phase work will concentrate on gathering the requirements for the applications and on producing a co-simulation environment: Modelling and co-simulation will be used to assess the performance of the system from different viewpoints prior to implementation, e.g. control system performance (for hybrid systems with continuous/discrete elements) using Simulink and ISaGRAF, fault tolerance for meeting technical goals using ARTISAN UML modelling, and availability and through-life costs modelling for meeting commercial goals. Wrappers will be used to connet RT-CORBA enabling co-simulation;
2) In the second phase, work will concentrate on the development of code generation tools (for rapid prototyping) that will integrate control law code, signal conditioning, input/output data checking, and fault detection, isolation and accommodation code. Four alternative means of code generation will be developed to provide obsolescence immunity for applications with 10-30 year lifetimes. These will be C++, IEC 1131-3, RT Java and VHDL for FPGA programming. This allows the support of PC based boards, PLCs and embedded intelligence. ARTISAN UML will be used for modelling the system architecture and to define how the code modules are allocated to the distributed resources;
3) In the final phase two demonstrator applications will be implemented to provide a focus for the work: In the first a heat treatment line control system will be demonstrated. This process control application has wide applicability across many areas and allows proving of the toolset. In the second a gas turbine engine/ water jet propulsion system controller will be implemented. This real-time safety-critical control application allows the performance of the tools for real-time control to be assessed. Additionally, other applications areas will be considered such as building automation, fire detection systems, process control, automotive control, manufacturing and power generation.
Milestones:
The research will produce an integrated design environment to support development of distributed systems using COTS components. Major milestones are related to the 3 main phases of the project: M1 (month 12) Co-simulation environment complete, M2 (month 24) Code generators complete, M3 (month 36) Application demonstrators complete. Additionally, seven minor interim milestones have also been defined for completion of the control co-simulation m1 (month 12), Hardware-In-The-Loop Testing complete m2 (month15), architecture co-simulation complete m3 (month 12), through-life cost modelling complete m4 (month 12), C++/IEC 1131-3 code generator complete m5 (month 24), Java code generator complete m6 (month 24) and VHDL generator complete m7 (month 24).
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencessoftware
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringcontrol systems
- social sciencessociologyindustrial relationsautomation
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensorssmart sensors
- social scienceslaw
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Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
S10 2TN SHEFFIELD
United Kingdom