Control and hardware-in-the-loop simulation of fruit packing machine with IEC 61499

This paper presents an investigation into the migration from standard centralized control to modular, distributed control for a fruit packing machine. Along with control that was developed using IEC 61499, a simulation model of the plant was developed in parallel. Both were deployed to hardware to demonstrate seamless testing using a single underlying architecture. A visualization of the simulation model was created to view the simulation live. Comparisons between IEC 61499 and traditional techniques were outlined during the implementation. Difficulties in applying commonly used traditional design elements to the IEC 61499 standard were addressed.