With 'Fourzero', the company Automation of Things is presenting a programming system that is designed to offer a high degree of reusability of code for control tasks. The reason: control code is task-oriented and therefore developed independently of hardware and system topology. "This leads to a paradigm shift in control programming," explains Dr. Jürgen Seyler, Managing Director of Automation of Things Europe.

This concept has its origins in IT, where the introduction of service-oriented architecture (SOA) has achieved great success. Software development has become faster and more agile, costs have fallen thanks to the reusability of services and cross-platform apps can communicate with each other. In addition, systems are implemented by orchestrating services.

Until now, SOA in the production environment was limited to IT services. With Fourzero, Automation of Things also implements the architecture at OT level. The programming platform meets the requirements of the control level in production: real-time requirements and support for industrial bus systems are programmed together with Internet and cloud connections in a single system.

The concept is simple: the user programs apps that communicate via various protocols - which are implemented as a service. The apps themselves are put together by graphically linking function blocks and orchestrating their processing via events. The function blocks themselves are based on the IEC-61499 standard, a further development of the well-known PSP programming standard IEC-61131 for distributed systems.

After program development, the application is first tested virtually on the PC in simulation mode and then distributed to any distributed systems with 'Fourzero' runtime installed. These include intelligent drives and actuators such as vacuum and pneumatic components, sensors, distributed mini PLCs, HMI, box PCs, open PLCs, edge devices, communication controllers or programmable hubs.

Arbitrary distribution of apps

The platform is particularly suitable for systems with several low-performance processors. This is because the arbitrary distribution of apps and program modules in the system enables computationally intensive programs to be outsourced. This relieves the burden on sensors and actuators with usually low-power processors. The resource-intensive program parts can be transferred to devices with more powerful processors, such as PLCs, edge computing devices or industrial PCs. "The event-based software architecture reduces the load on the communication bus to a minimum," says Seyler. "This architecture makes FourZero ideal for combining real-time control tasks and Internet connectivity, which is particularly important for fog computing," says Seyler. In this way, energy optimization algorithms can be programmed into actuators or machines and system components, for example, and data aggregation can be carried out at the same time in order to send data to the manufacturer's or operator's cloud for predictive maintenance. The end user can expand the programming with their own programs.