Using OPC-UA for the autoconfiguration of real-time Ethernet systems

In the future, production systems will consist of modular and flexible production components, being able to adapt to completely new manufacturing processes. This requirement arises from market turbulences caused by customer demands, i. e. highly customized goods in smaller production batches, or phenomenon like commercial crisis. In order to achieve adaptable production systems, one of the major challenges is to develop suitable autoconfiguration mechanisms for industrial automation systems. This paper presents a two-step architecture for the autoconfiguration of real-time Ethernet (RTE) systems. As a first step, an RTE-independent device discovery mechanism is introduced. Afterwards, it is shown how the parameters of an RTE can be configured automatically using Profinet IO as an exemplary RTE system. In contrast to the existing approaches, the proposed discovery mechanism is based on the OPC Unified Architecture (OPC-UA). In addition, a procedure to autoconfigure modular IO-Devices is introduced.