Tool Support for the UML Automation Profile - For Domain-Specific Software Development in Manufacturing

The development of modern distributed automation applications is challenging and present development practices contain manual transferring of informal information from one phase to another. Our research aims to overcome some of these challenges by integrating concepts from modern object-oriented design, model-driven development and high-level modeling potential of the UML automation profile into a seamless development path from PI-diagrams to control software. This paper presents a prototype of a control engineering tool that supports the UML automation profile and is intended to cover part of the development chain. The tool was implemented on the Eclipse platform and it utilizes various open source tools and frameworks to enable also usage of UML and SysML in modeling work. The implemented tool can be extended by transformation tools capable of processing requirements of the control system and PIM-model of the designed control software.