Developing CPPS within IEC-61499 based on low cost devices

The adoption of new technologies and automation standards, such as OPC-UA and IEC61499, is essential in order to satisfy the flexibility and reconfiguration needs required at the Factories of the Future. Currently, the Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS) are at the core of the new control and automation distributed systems. However, it is necessary to provide the research community with low cost platforms capable of integrating these new technologies and standards for prototyping new products and concepts. This work presents a low-cost embedded architecture capable of providing process data by means of OPC-UA services, integrated as IEC61499 blocks. Thus, IEC61499 provides high-level capabilities by combining easily software components with independence of the hardware platform used.