"20 years of OPC UA standardization," says Stefan Hoppe happily at the press conference, recalling the first meeting to define OPC UA from 3 to 7 November 2003. A lot has happened since then. Recent activities that are particularly close to Hoppe's heart concern interoperability in cloud applications. The President of the OPC Foundation criticizes the fact that "OPC UA is not yet well enough known in the IT world." According to him, however, this is currently changing, as the OPC Foundation has a "unique offering". Hoppe: "We provide a powerful description language to describe data, interfaces and the behavior of the application. For the exchange of information between companies, transport options and tested security are included in the package. Directory services and file transfer have been part of OPC UA since 2013 and have been implemented in many products. REST interfaces with OPC UA have been usable since 2016, but are currently being further expanded and provide the IT world with easy access to standardized data - whether live or static."

Current activities at a glance

Next, Hoppe discusses the activities of the Smart Manufacturing Institute CESMII - the US counterpart to the German Industry 4.0 initiative. At SPS, CESMII will be presenting the proof-of-concept of an 'EU Digital Product Passport' (DPP), which contains a 'Product Carbon Footprint Smart Manufacturing Profile' based on OPC UA. In addition, the DPP uses the Asset Administration Shell Exchange (AASX) file format and the Asset Administration Shell REST (AAS REST) interface of the Industry 4.0 platform. The DPP was developed with the recently updated CESMII Smart Manufacturing Profile Designer, which is also on display at the OPC Foundation booth. Furthermore, in the USA, the Digital Twin Consortium offers an open source solution based on OPC UA to provide digital twins with interoperability.

The Metaverse Group has already completed its work. Hoppe: "We have demonstrated an industrial metaverse as an open source project using the example of a wind farm application!" The Metaverse group has based this on an open source reference architecture of the Digital Twin Consortium's manufacturing ontology and a virtual 3D landscape created with Unity. With its modeling options and secure connectivity, OPC UA acts as a de facto digital twin - the virtual turbines are linked to the physical reality via OPC UA over MQTT.
The OPC Foundation is now also tackling the topic of artificial intelligence with a working group. Hoppe: "The public call for participation will take place shortly."
The first phase of the Field Level Communications (FLC) initiative launched in November 2018 has also been completed. This focused on controller-to-controller (C2C) communication, i.e. the horizontal networking of controllers for the cyclical exchange of process data, including real-time and safety-critical data. The first UAFX products are expected to be certified for this phase from mid-2024.
The focus of the second project phase is already underway and is on the controller-to-device (C2D) use case, including the development of application profiles for devices for motion control and regulation, field instruments and I/O peripherals.

First robot controller certified

The high quality of OPC UA integration is becoming increasingly relevant for end customers due to the large number of OPC UA projects. End customers' demand for certified products means that application interfaces are now also being tested more frequently. "With Seiko Epson, we have certified the first six robot interfaces for correct OPC UA integration this year," concludes Hoppe.

OPC Foundation at the SPS 2023: Hall 5, Stand 140