Adaptation of resource-oriented service technologies for industrial informatics

In the domain of industrial automation the interoperability of devices gains importance. One major trend is the usage of Ethernet based solutions to connect devices at all levels of a company. Through a common interface technology in all levels of execution, a central control mechanism or business flows can control an entire workflow. This paper describes a new RESTful oriented device architecture, called RODA. RODA will be compared against Web services based service-oriented devices architecture. It describes how Web services technologies can be adapted to fulfill the requirements of automation, embedded, and real-time domains. The development process in these domains can gain an advantage, with the usage of middleware components based on well-known Internet technologies. Furthermore, the created interfaces can be easily reused in other applications and merged with other interfaces to combine a bundle with an additional benefit. The applicability of RODA has been verified on a mobile robotics testbed, where robots are communicating via different wireless interfaces.