AbstractThis paper intends to provide a basis for the discussion

and development of an Open Source Initiative for a Framework

for Distributed Industrial Automation and Control (4DIAC) based
on the new IEC 61499 standard. The general understanding of the
authors is that an open source strategy is an adequate means for
pushing current developments within the industrial automation
domain and bringing together interested partners to focus and unite
their concerns on a distributed and flexible automation environ-
ment. One main point is also to provide a stable basis for industrial
appliances and further research into next generation distributed
automation and control systems based on the IEC 61499 standard.
A look at the current status of the developments for IEC 61499
shows, that these targets may not have been attained. In the opinion
of the authors, the targets presented above need a common and pub-
licly available reference framework. Therefore the general idea of
the 4DIAC initiative is to provide such an open framework for the
IEC 61499 standard that gives the opportunity to establish an
automation and control environment based on the three main tar-
gets, portability, configurability and interoperability.
I. INTRODUCTION
Currently industrial automation is divided into at least two main
traditional domains: programmable logical controllers (PLC) and
distributed control systems (DCS). Due to the trend of industrial
automation equipping even intelligent field devices with embedded
controllers in order to enable performing tasks autonomously, the
concepts of PLCs and DCSs are being merged and extended to
distributed industrial process, measurement and control systems
(IPMCSs). An IPMCS forms one base of Scalable Flexible Auto-
mation (SFA) [3] and consists of a network of smart and hetero-
geneous intelligent field devices (different vendors, different appli-
cations) interacting with each other via standardized (field)bus-
connections. The IEC 61499 standard has been developed to en-
able and to facilitate the engineering of IPMCSs by meeting the
fundamental requirements for SFA, these being reusability, con-
figurability, portability of applications, scalability, flexibility, in-
teroperability and reconfiguration [1],[3],[4].
Currently there exist only a few different implementations of the
IEC 61499 reference model. One reason for this might be that the
standard itself is especially weak in the definition of the execution
model of function blocks and the scheduling of events within func-
tion block networks. Therefore the international automation net-
work O3NEIDA (An Open Object-Oriented Knowledge Economy
for Intelligent Industrial Automation) [14] founded the working
group Execution Models of IEC 61499 Function Block Applica-
tions to overcome the above mentioned problems and to provide
solutions for them. The other reason for slow take up of the stan-
dard by industry is that the IEC 61499 standard is now mainly
used in research work by various research and university institutes.
These groups are distributed around the world but they all apply
the FBDK/FBRT Java-based reference implementation from HO-
LOBOC Inc. [3]. Since this Java-based implementation has no real
acceptance in industrial practice a reference implementation for
IEC 61499 that conforms to industry norms is currently missing.
The challenge and aim of this paper is to present an open
source initiative as an industrial conformant reference implemen-
tation of the IEC 61499 standard and its application in various
automation domains. The paper is organized as follows: Section
II gives a short overview about the new IEC 61499 standard for
distributed industrial processes, measurement and control sys-
tems. The aims and projects of the 4DIAC open source initiative
are presented in section III. Projects and institutions/companies
using 4DIAC projects are discussed in section IV. The summary
and conclusions of this paper are given in section V.
II. THE IEC 61499 REFERENCE MODEL
A. The Standard in General
The new standard IEC 61499 [1] serves as a reference architec-
ture that is developed for distributed, modular, and flexible control
systems. It specifies an architectural model for distributed applica-
tions in industrial-process measurement and control systems
(IPCMS) in a generic way and extends the Function Block (FB)
model of its predecessor IEC 61131-3 [2] with additional event
handling mechanisms. The most important concepts of IEC 61499
are an event-driven execution model, a management interface ca-
pable of basic reconfiguration support and an application-centered
modeling methodology. The IEC 61499 standard has even more
ambitious objectives. These can be described by examining three
issues portability, configurability, and interoperability [3],[4]:
Portability: the ability of software tools to accept and interpret
Framework for Distributed
Industrial Automation and Control (4DIAC)
Thomas Strasser
Martijn Rooker
Gerhard Ebenhofer
PROFACTOR GmbH
Im Stadtgut A2
4407 Steyr-Gleink, Austria
{thomas.stasser, martijn.rooker,
gerhard.ebenhofer}@profactor.at
Alois Zoitl
Christoph Snder
Automation and Control Institute (ACIN)
Odo-Struger Lab
Vienna University of Technology
Gusshausstrae 27-29/376
1040 Vienna, Austria
{suender, zoitl}@acin.tuwien.ac.at
Antonio Valentini
Allan Martel
O3NEIDA Inc.
135 Dunbarton Court
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1K 4L6
{antoniovalentini,
allanmartel}@oooneida.org
283
The EEE nlernalonal Conlerence on
nduslral nlormalcs NDN 2008)
DCC. Daeeon. Korea July !3!6. 2008
978!42442!7!8}08}$25.00 2008 EEE
correctly library elements produced by other software tools.
Configurability: the ability of devices and their software com-
ponents to be configured (selected, assigned locations, inter-
connected and parameterized) by multiple software tools.
Interoperability: the ability of devices from different ven-
dors operating together to perform the functions specified
by one or more distributed applications.
A detailed description of IEC 61499 and its aptitude for re-
configuration purposes can be found in [5]. The IEC 61499
therefore builds an ideal starting base for the control architec-
ture of next generation automation and control systems.
B. IEC 61499 based Solutions
The actual work and application of IEC 61499 can be di-
vided into the following two areas:
1) Research in IEC 61499: IEC 61499 became standardized
formally in January 2005. Before that, and since 2000, the
standard was only available in the form of a so-called Public
Available Specification (PAS). Although IEC 61499 has been
available in some forms for a long time, most published work
on the standard up to now has been academic or, if industri-
ally-based has resulted only in prototypical test cases. Most ac-
tivities around the IEC 61499 standard have been in the stan-
dardization of the execution environment and in the definition
of semantics. Some current research is under way in pursuing
design and coding tools. A good overview of already accom-
plished work in IEC 61499 is provided by [6].
2) Industrial Adoption of IEC 61499: As far as our investigation
showed, the first adoptions of IEC 61499 were mainly case studies
and prototypes. The starting point of several test cases was the de-
velopment of the FBDK/FBRT package from Rockwell Automa-
tion. Within this environment it was possible to test the features of
IEC 61499. This remains the main environment used for IEC
61499. Other companies also tested IEC 61499, but never got
much beyond the prototype stage (e.g. see published results from
Softing or Yamatake [6]). Our research work reveals that two
companies offer control equipment based on the FBDK/FBRT en-
vironment currently. The first of these is Tate Control from New
Zealand which offers a small controller with several communica-
tion interfaces and I/O ports. The first industrial test application for
this product will be product tracking in a meat processing facility.
The second company is Western Reserve Controls located in Ohio
USA. Their product is called HoloCon. HoloCon is a small control
device equipped with a configurable set of I/O ports, Ethernet, and
Control Are Network (CAN). Currently, no industrial use case for
the application of HoloCon is publicly available. ICS Triplex has
developed a complete IEC 61499 based product in their ISaGRAF
environment which is built upon an existing IEC 61311 platform
but which is also certified as IEC 61499 compliant [6]. In 2007 a
small Austrian start-up called nxtControl started to develop a IEC
61499 compatible solution based on the 4DIAC runtime environ-
ment FORTE and their engineering environment nxtStudio. Unlike
the ISaGRAF solution, the nxtControl implementation is fully
based within the IEC 61499 reference model. Furthermore the
nxtControl environment also includes an integrated HMI solution
which replaces common SCADA and HMI functionality.
III. THE 4DIAC INITIATIVE
A. General
The general aim of the 4DIAC initiative is to provide an
open, IEC 61499 standard compliant framework, that gives the
opportunity to establish an automation and control environ-
ment as well as to provide a reference implementation (i.e.
provide a reference for an advanced execution model for IEC
61499) based on the targets portability, configurability and in-
teroperability [7]. Currently, the following two projects are
under development of the 4DIAC initiative:
IEC 61499 compliant runtime environment (FORTE)
IEC 61499 compliant engineering tool (4DIAC-IDE)
The source code of both projects is hosted at the Sourceforge
Open Source Portal at [19]. Furthermore a compiled version of the
4DIAC-IDE is available at the 4DIAC web-site [7]. Potential con-
tributors who are interested to join this initiative or who wants to
provide further extension are invited to contact the 4DIAC project
leaders (further information is available at the 4DIAC web-site [7]).
Contributors of FORTE/4DIAC-IDE code are protected from
liability for any use that may be made of their contributed code by
the Eclipse Public License (EPL) [9] Version 1.0 governing
the use of such code. Furthermore, the EPL permits any party to
offer commercial products based on the open source code and re-
quires only that they make available publicly the original source
code from the open source project. This means that a developers
own additional intellectual property (IP) is fully protected.
The 4DIAC open source initiative was founded in July 2007
by PROFACTOR GmbH and the Automation and Control Insti-
tute (ACIN) of the Vienna University of Technology. Further-
more this initiative is now conducted within, supported and pro-
moted by the international automation network O3NEIDA. The
4DIAC initiative evolved out of two national funded research
projects in Austria which will be described in the next chapter.
B. Technological Basis / Preceding Research Work
The fundamental work for this open source initiative was
completed during the two Austrian funded research projects
Crons [12] and CEDAC [13]. These research projects have
been funded by the FITIT: Embedded Systems program, an
initiative of the Austrian federal ministry of transport, innova-
tion, and technology (bm:vit).
C. Actual 4DIAC Projects
1) 4DIAC-RTE/FORTE: The FORTE is a small portable
C++ implementation of an IEC 61499 runtime environment
targeting small embedded control devices (i.e. controllers with
16/32 Bit architecture). It provides the execution of basic func-
tion blocks, composite function blocks, and service interface
function blocks according to IEC 61499. The FORTE is cur-
rently available for the following two platforms: A PC based
version tested on i386 (Cygwin and Linux) and PPC (Linux),
and an embedded ARM7 based version.
2) 4DIAC-IDE: The 4DIAC-IDE provides an extensible en-
gineering environment for modeling distributed control applica-
tions with IEC 61499. A hardware capability definition based on
284
FDCML [8] allows the modeling of control hardware and its in-
terconnections through networks. The modeled applications can
be downloaded to and uploaded from FORTE powered control
devices according the means defined by the IEC 61499 Com-
pliance Profile for Feasibility Demonstrations [3]. The basis of
the 4DIAC-IDE is the Eclipse [9] open tool framework.
D. Design Considerations for the actual 4DIAC Projects
The IEC 61499 standard provides in principle an architecture
and reference model for distributed industrial process, measure-
ment and control systems by the use of function blocks. There are
some parts of the standard that are weak and / or not defined in de-
tail in order to give enough space for specific implementations.
Furthermore the standard defines (in Part 4) specific rules
for additional definitions which are called Compliance Pro-
files. As mentioned in section I, the aim of the O3NEIDA
[14] working group Execution Models of IEC 61499 Func-
tion Block Applications is to provide solutions for the defini-
tion of future Compliance Profiles. Currently this working
group is discussing different execution semantics and execu-
tion models for IEC 61499 Function Block Networks (FBN).
This discussion has lead to the following design considerations
for the implementations in the 4DIAC open source initiative:
Execution of IEC 61499 function block networks: The FORTE
uses for the execution of Event Chains (EC) the so-called
Event Chain Executor (ECE). For the implementation of the
ECE the Event Dispatcher (ED) concept was used. In the ED
all Function Blocks (FB) triggered either by an input or an ex-
ternal event are queued in a list using the first-in-first-out ap-
proach. If the execution of the actual FB is finished, the next
FB in the queued list is scheduled for its execution. Ref. [15]
describes the execution model used in more detail. The execu-
tion model used leads to a sequential execution of a FBN. In
order to have an independent execution of FBNs or parts of
them in different resources a dedicated ED is used for each re-
source. In comparison, the most used IEC 61499 runtime so far
the FBRT from HOLOBLOC [3] uses the so-called Non-
Preemptive Multi-Threaded Resource (NPMTR) execution
approach. There ES (e.g. timers) are mapped to own Java-
threads. Within this thread the active element is handled (e.g.
wait for timeout) and according to the function of the FB out-
put data is set and corresponding output events are triggered.
The event notification mechanism is implemented as a simple
function call. This means that the originating FB calls the noti-
fication function of the event connection, which calls its desti-
nation FBs on itself. Because of this function call approach the
execution of the originating FB is blocked until the function
call returns. This may take quite a lot of time if a longer chain
of FBs is triggered. Additionally it is possible that in case of
closed event loops a FB is not in the correct internal state (e.g.
wrong ECC state). As conclusion the FORTE execution ap-
proach is more applicable for embedded real-time applications
as the FBRT because of its C++ implementation and the ad-
vanced execution model using the EC/ECE approach.
Real-time execution of IEC 61499 function block net-
works: The IEC 61499 standard does not define any con-
cepts for real-time execution of FBNs. In the FORTE the
ECE together with the ED is extended in order to execute
FBN parts meeting real-time constraints (e.g. deadlines).
For the execution of a certain EC a dedicated ED can be
modeled within the FORTE environment using special pa-
rameters of a real-time event FB. Details of this real-time
execution approach are explained in [15].
Specification and Execution of Composite Function Blocks
(CFB): Ref. [16] has discussed different solutions for the rep-
resentation and the execution of CFBs in a runtime environ-
ment. The different solutions have also shown different behav-
ior. The FORTE uses a CFB as a transparent hull for the exe-
cution of the event flow within the CFB. This results in a
higher reactivity and a simpler implementation of the FORTE.
Representation of Sub-Applications: The 4DIAC initiative
supports the usage of sub-applications as defined in the
IEC 61499 standard. There exists, compared to CFBs, also
different possibilities for the implementation of sub-
applications. Details are discussed in Ref. [16]. The
4DIAC-IDE uses the concept of sub-applications only as
means for a better structuring of applications. During the
download to the FORTE sub-applications are expanded to
a flat FBN structure. This means that the FORTE didnt
support the execution of sub-application types.
Portability, Interoperability, Configurability and Scalability:
In order to support the important IEC 61499 objectives of
portability, interoperability, configurability and scalability a
specific Compliance Profile has to be used. The 4DIAC
open source initiative applies therefore the well known IEC
61499 Compliance Profile for Feasibility Demonstration
[3], which was developed during the IMS Holonic Manufac-
turing Systems Project by Rockwell Automation, Softing and
PROFACTOR and used by FBDK/FBRT. It contains e.g. the
interface definition for the download of applications from
engineering tools to runtime environments or the specifica-
tion of an Ethernet-based communication between control
devices using the producer/consumer concept as well as the
server/client concept. This means that IEC 61499 control ap-
plications can currently either be developed with the 4DIAC-
IDE or the FBDK and then downloaded to a set of distrib-
uted FORTE or FBRT compliant control devices.
E. Development Roadmap for 4DIAC Projects
The following development steps are planned in 2008 for
the evolution of the above mentioned 4DIAC projects:
Milestone 1 at middle of May 2008
4DIAC-IDE
Refactoring of the source code from the CEDAC
project for the open source basis
Subapplication types
FORTE
Real-time execution (real-time events)
Adapter
Milestone 2 at middle of July 2008
4DIAC-IDE
285
Device/Resource/FB type editor
Adapter
FORTE
Firmware derived data types
User-defined FB types (basic and composite)
User defined data types
IV. PROJECTS AND INSTITUTIONS/COMPANIES USING 4DIAC
The following list provides an overview of projects and in-
stitutions/companies currently applying the 4DIAC-IDE and/or
the FORTE:
A. Reconfigurable and Reusable Assembly Equipment
In the European Union project PISA [10] concepts for Re-
configurable and Reusable Assembly Equipment will be de-
veloped. These are related to tools for the management of
components, configuration, design, planning and control, as
well as for simulation and testing. For the utilization of the
concept of an Intelligent Assist System (IAS) for assembly
processes and for reuse, the capability of rearranging its com-
ponents is crucial. Thus, reconfiguration concepts have to be
developed to enable on the one hand the rearrangement within
manufacturing equipment and IAS and on the other hand the
reuse of production equipment and IAS for changing produc-
tion tasks or at the end of life. Reconfiguration can be seen as
a process considering all organizational, planning, and techni-
cal requirements to disengage, service, and reengage the com-
ponents of a product or production system for different pur-
poses. To utilize an easy and quick reconfiguration as well as
reuse of whole assembly systems, e.g. assembly lines instead
of single robots or units, the adaptation of the control system is
a critical point. One objective in PISA is to design control
structures according to the mechanical structure to enable plug
and produce functionality when reconfiguring or reusing
equipment. Therefore the 4DIAC-IDE together with the
FORTE is used to reach this goal.
B. Simulation environment for a Model-Driven Embedded
Systems Design Environment
The MEDEIA project acronym stands for Model-Driven
Embedded Systems Design Environment for the Industrial
Automation Sector and the project itself is a European Union
funded research project in the 7th Framework Programme
[11]. The focus of the MEDEIA project is on Automation
Components (AC) as the basis for developing a model-based
embedded systems design environment. An important objec-
tive in the MEDEIA approach is an integrated simulation and
verification environment for ACs. Therefore MEDEIA will
generate the simulation for ACs automatically from the ACs
model. As these models contain relations to real-time execu-
tion estimations on real execution times and production times
can be made. The simulation model will be represented in an
IEC 61499-compliant manner supporting event-based systems
and capable of integrating a heterogeneous system environ-
ment. For this no separate simulation model has to be devel-
oped and maintained in MEDEIA. The FORTE will serve as
basis for simulation the needs in the MEDEIA project.
C. PROFACTOR Reconfigurable Robotic System
A reconfigurable robotic system is used to demonstrate some
advantages of the 4DIAC initiative. A modular 6-DOF robot that
is composed out of mechatronic components is used, as depicted
in Fig. 1. The robot consists out of six separate joints, which are
PowerCube modules provided from Schunk [15]. They are con-
nected with each other via special connector elements. The hard-
ware (embedded control) setup of the reconfigurable robotic sys-
tem is also shown in Fig. 1. Respectively two robot axes are con-
trolled by PC/104 embedded PCs equipped with a Debian Linux
and an OSADL real-time kernel patch. Furthermore, the FORTE
runtime environment is installed on each of the PC/104 control-
lers. The data exchange between the PC/104 and the Power-
Cubes is done via CAN. The engineering and visualization PC is
connected via standard Ethernet to the PC/104 controllers. The
engineering of the IEC 61499 robot control program is carried
out via the 4DIAC-IDE. The visualization and HMI are also
modeled with IEC 61499 FBs. Therefore the Java-based FBRT
[8] is used as runtime environment for the execution of the visu-
alization application since the FORTE does not support the exe-
cution of HMI SIFBs. The hardware structure of the modular 6-
DOF robot described above has lead to the implementation of a
Robot Control Application (RCA) and a Robot HMI Application
(RHA). The RCA contains the implemented control concept as
an IEC 61499 application. Each component of the control con-
cept has its own IEC 61499 FB representative. For visualization
and parameterization issues, a specific RHA was developed. The
RHA is also built out of special IEC 61499 HMI Service Inter-
face Function Blocks (SIFBs). The two applications communi-
cate with each other via Publish/Subscribe Function Blocks.
Fig. 1: 6-DOF Reconfigurable Robot @ PROFACTOR
The IEC 61499 system model for the robot controller con-
sists of four different remote devices. One remote device is
executed on the Visualization PC (equipped with the FBRT
since the FORTE provides no HMI functionality as it is pro-
vides by the FBRT), the other three devices are executed on
the PC/104 embedded hardware (equipped with the FORTE).
The communication among all devices is done via Ethernet.
The whole RHA is mapped to the visualization device while
the trajectory calculation and the feed-forward control function
blocks are mapped to the PowerCube 1&2 Device. A High-
Gain Observer FB is mapped to the PowerCube 5&6 Device.
The other control modules (CAN SIFB and controller FBs) are
represented as sub-applications in the RCA and are distributed
to the three PowerCube devices. For the interaction of the
PC/104 embedded controllers and the PowerCube modules the
special CAN SIFBs have been developed.
286
D. Automation and Control Institute (ACIN) Bottle Sort-
ing Application and Inverted Pendulum
1) Bottle-Sorting Application: This demonstrator has been
made out of several mechatronic devices, as depicted in Fig. 2.
Parts belonging together logically are grouped as devices
whereby each is equipped with a separate microcontroller. All
four devices are shaded in different colors as shown in Fig. 2.
Each device performs its tasks autonomously from all other
devices, coordinating only at the interfaces and sending mes-
sages over a common standard Ethernet link. The separator is
equipped with two light barriers for sensing the presence of
bottles. The pneumatically driven actuator is used to hold back
bottles. Only one bottle is allowed to be between the separator
and the next device, the high-speed pick and place unit
(HSPP). If the bottle is taken away by the HSPP, the next bot-
tle is allowed to enter this area. The task of the HSPP,
equipped with a pivot arm and a gripper, is to transport bottle
from the first to the second conveyor belt. The forth unit is the
sorter, equipped with a conveyor belt, a 3 channel color sensor
(in this application only two channels are used) and 2 turnouts.
Bottles put on the conveyor belt are scanned by the color sen-
sor. Dependent on the recognized color, the bottle is taken off
the belt by one of the two turnouts. For this application, two
different kinds of microcontrollers were used (Digi Con-
ntectME & Beck IPC@Chip) equipped with the FORTE.
Fig. 2: Bottle Sorting Application @ ACIN
2) Inverted Pendulum: This application was used in the
work of Ref. [18] as demonstrator in order to analyze the real-
time and reconfiguration performance/capability of the FORTE
runtime environment. An ATMEL ARM7 micro controller with
a Phytec Development Kit was used equipped with the FORTE
on an eCOS real-time operating system. As a result of this inves-
tigation the usage of the above mentioned real-time execution
approach [15],[18] implemented in the FORTE has shown its
applicability. Furthermore the reconfiguration capability was
presented by dynamically exchanging a simple PID controller
with a more complex state-space controller.
Fig. 3: Inverted Pendulum @ ACIN
E. University of Applied Sciences Wels (FH Wels) Dis-
tributed Energy Management System
The distributed energy management demonstrator which has
been developed at the University of Applied Sciences Wels
represents a stand alone autonomous energy network which is
typically used in houses designed for weekend use, alpine resorts
or for rural electrification purposes. A test configuration has
been set up, to show the functionality of the 4DIAC technology.
The energy network composition consists of two power produc-
ers (1.2 kW fuel cell, and a 120 W photo voltaic module)
wherein the fuel cell provides the necessary energy flexibility for
the system, a 100 Ah battery and two consumers (Halogen lamps
200 W and 500 W). The power generators including the battery
as buffer device performs with 24 VDC and are connected in
parallel to each other. The power consumers operate with 230 V
AC and are connected in parallel as well. These two networks
are joined together by using an AC converter. Fig. 4 depicts the
set up of all interconnected power network devices. In order to
provide the produced or consumed power, the devices voltage
and current gets captured within the power measurement set up.
These measured analogue values get digitized using an Ana-
log/Digital (A/D) converter. To connect or disconnect a device
to/from the power grid a logical driven power switch has been
designed, where a relay gets triggered by a digital output of the
microcontroller. An ARM7 based Digi ConnectME embedded
module equipped with a FORTE runtime, which provides
enough I/O-ports to connect the above mentioned hardware, was
used. The Digi ConnectME module provides the essential com-
munication interface, an Ethernet port. In addition a simulation
model for the whole distributed energy management system was
developed for validation purposes using the FORTE for control
issues and the FBRT for visualization.
Fig. 4: Distributed Energy Management System @ FH Wels
F. University of Auckland Smart Pallet System
At the University of Aucklands infoMechatronics Lab FORTE
has been applied to the wireless version of the Digi Connect mod-
ule (the Digi ConnectWE). This wireless control module controls
the functionality of mobile production resources like a pallet of a
transport system. They used a pallet that is capable of storing sev-
eral liquids on one pallet. In order to achieve this, the wireless con-
trol module interacts with the filling station providing the liquids
and with the transport system signaling when the pallet is ready to
be filled or when it is ready to move on. This showcase demon-
strates how FORTE and IEC 61499 helps to improve the interac-
tion between different production resources.
287
G. Industrial Adoption of 4DIAC
Up to now all presented 4DIAC usage has been done by
universities or research institutes. A main reason for this is that
4DIAC arose from several research projects and is currently in
a prototypic stage. Nevertheless already two companies are us-
ing 4DIAC projects in different automation projects. The first
company is an Austrian system integrator. This company is us-
ing IEC 61499 to coordinate several machines in a large flexi-
ble production process. The main advantage this company has
from IEC 61499 is the reuse of FBs for different applications
and within the application. Furthermore they are able to test
the functionality of the coordination process in advance.
The second company that uses 4DIAC projects is the Austrian
company nxtControl. nxtControl is developing an IEC 61499
based control system. This control system consists of an engineer-
ing tool, a runtime environment, and an HMI/SCADA system.
They using FORTE as basis for their runtime environment and ex-
tended it with user defined FB types and data types. A great nov-
elty of the nxtControl system is the full integration of an HMI sys-
tem and a new approach for handling the communication in a dis-
tributed control system. One of the first applications that have been
controlled with their system is the heating and air-condition control
of the lecture halls at the medical university in Hannover. Fig. 7
shows one HMI panel of this automation project.
Fig. 5: HMI display for the heating and air-condition control of a lecture hall
V. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
This paper introduced the Open Source Initiative Framework
for Distributed Industrial Automation and Control (4DIAC) as
a reference implementation for the new IEC 61499 standard.
The actual 4DIAC projects FORTE and 4DIAC-IDE are pre-
sented and some implementation details have been discussed
based on the outcomes of the O3NEIDA working group Execu-
tion Models of IEC 61499 Function Block Applications. Fur-
thermore the application of the 4DIAC projects in various appli-
cation domains and projects are mentioned.
For the future several enhancements are planned for the
4DIAC open source basis in order for it to become a real in-
dustrial standard for many applications and applications do-
mains in the industrial automation sector.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the O3NEIDA community
for providing research contributions and for facilitating further
cooperative research and discussion in the field of distributed
control based on IEC 61499.
PROFACTOR is partner of the EU-funded FP6 Innovative
Production Machines and Systems (I*PROMS) Network of Ex-
cellence. Further information is available at: www.iproms.org
REFERENCES
[1] IEC TC65/WG6, IEC 61499: Function Blocks for Industrial Process
Measurement and Control Systems, Parts 1 4, International Electro-
technical Commission IEC Std., Rev. 1.0, 2004/2005.
[2] IEC TC65/WG6, IEC 61131-3: Programmable controllers - Part 3: Pro-
gramming languages, International Electrotechnical Commission IEC
Std., Rev. 2.0, Jan. 2003.
[3] HOLOBLOC Inc., HOLOBLOC.com - Function Block-Based, Holonic
Systems Technology, Access Date October 2007. [Online]. Available:
www.holobloc.com
[4] R. W. Lewis, Modeling control systems using IEC 61499. IEE Publish-
ing, 2001, no. ISBN: 0 85296 796 9.
[5] T. Strasser, A. Zoitl, F. Auinger, and C. Snder, Towards engineering meth-
ods for reconfiguration of distributed automation systems based on the refer-
ence model of IEC 61499, 2nd International Conference on Industrial Appli-
cations of Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2005.
[6] A. Zoitl, T. Strasser, K. Hall, R. Staron, C. Snder, and B. Favre- Bulle,
The Past, Present, and Future of IEC 61499, 3rd International Confer-
ence on Industrial Applications of Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems,
Regensburg, Germany, 2007.
[7] 4DIAC-Consortium, 4DIAC - Framework for Distributed Industrial
Automation and Control, Open Source Initiative, Access Date October
2007. [Online]. Available: www.fordiac.org
[8] INTERBUS Club, FDCML - Field Device Configuration Markup Lan-
guage, Access Date October 2007. [Online]. Available: www.fdcml.org
[9] Eclipse Foundation, Eclipse - Open Tool Framework, Access Date
October 2007. [Online]. Available: www.eclipse.org
[10] PISA Consortium, PISA Flexible Assembly Systems Through Work-
place-Sharing and Time sharing Human-Machine Cooperation, funded
European Union Research Project under the 6
th
Research Framework
Programme, contract n 026697-2, Access Date February 2008.
[Online]. Available: www.pisa-ip.org
[11] MEDEIA Consortium, MEDEIA Model-Driven Embedded Systems
Design Environment for the Industrial Automation Sector, funded
European Union Research Project under the 7
th
Research Framework
Programme, grant agreement n 211448, Access Date February 2008.
[Online]. Available: www.medeia.eu
[12] Crons Consortium, Crons Micro Holons for Next Generation Distrib-
uted Embedded Automation and Control Systems, funded Austrian Research
Project under the FIT-IT Embedded Systems Programme, contract n 808205,
Access Date February 2008. [Online]. Available: www.microns.org
[13] CEDAC Consortium, CEDAC Evolution Control Environment for
Distributed Automation Components, funded Austrian Research Project
under the FIT-IT Embedded Systems Programme, contract n 809447, Ac-
cess Date February 2008. [Online]. Available: www.ecedac.org
[14] O3NEIDA Inc., An Open Object-Oriented Knowledge Economy for In-
telligent Industrial Automation, Access Date February 2008. [Online].
Available: www.oooneida.org
[15] A. Zoitl, R. Smodic, C. Snder, and G. Grabmair, Enhanced real-time
execution of modular control software based on IEC 61499, in Proc.
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA'06),
Orlando, 2006, pp. 327-332.
[16] C. Snder, A. Zoitl, J. H. Christensen, M. Colla, and T. Strasser, Exe-
cution Models for the IEC 61499 elements Composite Function Block
and Subapplication, in Proc. 5th IEEE Int. Conference on Industrial In-
formatics (INDIN07), 2007, pp. 1169-1175
[17] Schunk GmbH & Co. KG, PowerCube Mechatronic Components Ac-
cess Date February 2008. [Online]. Available: www.schunk.de
[18] A. Zoitl, Basic Real-Time Reconfiguration Services for Zero Down-Time
Automation Systems, Dissertation, Vienna University of Technology, 2007.
[19] The 4DIAC-Consortium, 4DIAC Projects at Sourceforge Open Source
Portal, Access Date May 2008. [Online]. Available:
www.sourceforge.net/projects/fordiac
288