Ontology-driven automated software configuration for manufacturing system components

Nowadays the design and configuration of control applications is traditionally done manually once for a designated system layout. Manufacturing components, which autonomously embed themselves into the existing control system without requiring extensive human involvement, are regarded as vitally important to achieve more flexible and reconfigurable manufacturing systems. In this paper we investigate the feasibility of an automated configuration of the hardware-near control application for physical manufacturing components based on agent technology. We employ automation agents, which have an ontological representation of the physical components they control. Based on this knowledge, the agents use a reconfiguration infrastructure for control software based on the standard IEC 61499. Using our approach, the hardware-near control application does not have to be designed and instantiated manually as this is performed automatically.