A distributed control architecture for a reconfigurable manufacturing plant

This work presents a novel approach for the implementation of industrial Cyber-Physical System (CPS) based on the integration of the IEC 61499 international standard for distributed industrial automation, as conceived in the DAEDALUS Horizon 2020 project. Among the different innovations introduced by the project, this work focuses on the establishment of internal cognitive functionalities: a Function Block for model-based optimal control is devised for the optimal orchestration of CPS. As a case study, the automation of a lab-scale industrial plant for End Of Life treatment of electronic circuit boards is developed with the proposed methodology. The plant orchestrator is a validated Hybrid Model Predictive Control solution. It is shown how it is possible to model complex systems, creating aggregated structures of CPSs, and to orchestrate them thanks to the distributed intelligence. The completion of the software development kit for a seamless development of optimal orchestration and logic control is the final objective of the ongoing project.