IEC 61499 projects

DAEDALUS

Distributed control and simulAtion platform to support an Ecosystem of DigitAL aUtomation developerS

Abstract

Financed by the European Commission, Daedalus has been conceived to enable the full exploitation of the CPS concept of virtualized intelligence, through the adoption of a completely distributed automation platform based on IEC-61499 standard, fostering the creation of a Digital Ecosystem that could go beyond the current limits of manufacturing control systems, the project proposes an ever-growing market of innovative solutions for the design, engineering, production and maintenance of plants’ automation.

Daedalus acknowledges deeply that CPS intrinsic existence defies the concept of rigid hierarchical levels, being each CPS capable of complex functions across all layers. An updated version of the pyramid representation is therefore adopted, where CPS are hierarchically orchestrated in real-time (within the shop floor) through the IEC-61499 automation language in order to achieve complex and optimized behaviours, while still being singularly and directly accessible, at runtime, by whatever elements of the Factory ICT infrastructure that wants to leverage on their internal functionalities.