Components in the material handling segment are increasingly turning into modular units. International competitive pressure means that new requirements, such as better integration of the operator while at the same time increasing functional safety, are decisive factors for the acceptance of solutions on the market.

Today's high variance in control system design and the different interfaces represent a challenge. In order to meet the requirements of the future, the hardware diversity of machine control systems must be reduced and data protocols standardized. In-house processes must also be further developed and adapted to the new conditions. Many innovative machine functions will be determined by software in the future, meaning that sales will be less concerned with promoting purely mechanical functions and more with intelligent machine functions and networking options.

The research and development goals

In future, the above-mentioned challenges are to be solved by assistance functions that can be used on different types of devices such as smartphones, tablets, classic SCADA systems or control components. This requires, for example, extended development tools for the design in order to configure control programs with geometric data directly from the 3D planning or to simplify the engineering of distributed applications. The aim of the procedure is to design the entire application and distribute the functions in a resource-oriented manner, whereby the resulting communication between the sub-applications is implicitly established by the engineering tools or by the runtime environment and a central coordination instance is no longer necessary.

The use of radio-based communication systems such as 5G naturally requires security, so that practicable solutions must be generated to create resilient networks with distributed security means. The close involvement of operators in production-related logistics also requires the localization of both the operators themselves and the moving and static components. The automated use of cranes in particular requires consideration of areas that must not be crossed. There should also be a simple way of defining these areas in 3D planning tools and transferring them to the control systems via standardized interfaces or exchange formats.

Distributed control system

In contrast to the centralized and hierarchically structured control and application processes established in the initial situation, the innovative assistance functions envisaged require the interaction of several control components in the machines involved. This component-based and "collaborative automation" requires distributed and modular functionalities. At the heart of the concept developed are devices that are primarily used in an industrial environment and can take on various tasks. They run autonomously and are embedded directly in machines. A portable "Distributed Control Platform" (DCP) component is provided on the devices specifically to fulfill the control tasks.

It is based on the Distributed Object Model Environment (DOME) and allows any number of devices and machines to work together to solve transportation tasks, for example. Like any conventional control device, the DCP processes sensor data and generates actuator information, which is exchanged with the peripherals via suitable interfaces. Control information between DCP instances is exchanged via an efficient communication protocol, which can also be secure if IP communication is used.

The architecture concept of an industrial device provides for other components - specific to the application - to be present in addition to the pure control components. It is important to emphasize that dynamic configuration tasks are carried out via the Industrial IoT component and that no central coordination of control tasks is required. The DCP components establish communication with each other independently if there are application-specific relationships between them.