Ontology-based model-driven design of distributed control applications in manufacturing systems

Integration of system design models with software design has been employed as a common paradigm for model-driven design of control applications of distributed automation systems. However, there is still a lack of efficient methods to automatically project the system design to the control dimension. In this study, ontology modelling and reasoning is exploited to bridge the system design in SysML and control application design in IEC 61499 specific to the manufacturing domain. First, a manufacturing ontology (MFO) is formally defined, based on which the system design can be enriched and verified. Second, a distributed control ontology (DCO) is proposed to correlate the enriched system design and control application design such that automated inference between them can be achieved. Finally, an IEC 61499 model is generated from the platform-independent control application design in DCO. The approach is implemented by an ontology-based framework leveraging semantic web technologies. A CNC bending machine is used as a case study to illustrate the workflow and potential usage of the generated models.