Dp 604 en
Development of a Human Machine Interface and Communication System with a future IO-Link Master Test Device
Author: Schneider Alexander
Industry 4.0 represents a keyword for a novel technical revolution within smart factories and the creation of an own peripheral intelligence for an improved supply chain. Germany as one of the leading countries in industrial productions and embedded systems applies new standards for the inversion of the production logic, i.e. replacing the centralized by a decentralized fabrication. Instead of organizing the production by a main automation system, an intelligent workpiece itself controls its making and acquaints the machines with its manner of preparation. Therefore, new intelligent sensors and actuators are necessary to continuously acquire the whereabouts and conditions of these products without the intervention of humans. IO-Link is such a standard for intelligent devices which are easily replaceable, capable of monitoring their own status and automatic gathering of specialized operators, e.g. via the internet, in the case of warnings or failures. Such devices are connected to an IO-Link Master which is itself linked to an upper automation system. In order to investigate the Master components, a test device is proposed at Siemens s.r.o. in Prague that simulates IO-Link peripheral devices and which has to be configured by a user-friendly Human Machine Interface. Thus, an innovative PC application is developer within the scope of the master thesis that allows parametrization in a broad range of IO-Link and hardware specific features applying a state-of-the-art software pattern for separating visual and functional code and the development of an autonomic test module using a predefined script of XML functions. For the information exchange between the PC and several test devices, an appropriate hybrid communication system and the related protocols are invented for this specific purpose with the taken advantages of variable- length quantities for a reduced packet overhead, implemented state machine patterns as a maintenance-friendly design and both a module independent C++ implementation and thread-safe integration avoiding transcription of the source code for the communication participants that can be implemented in different programming languages. For the first release, USB connection is exploited but the complete system is also characterized by a layer-implemented approach according to the OSI Model to be executable on lower level interfaces like S7-DOS.
- Schneider Alexander, mailto:schneale@fel.cvut.cz