Siemens Aktiengesellschaft

Darko Anicic

Aparna Saisree Thuluva

Martin Winter

Corina Kim Schindhelm

Alexander Hoffman

Modern industrial processes demand flexibility in terms of how data flows are structured in an automation pyramid. Instead of only upward and downward flows, the data should be accessible directly at each level of the pyramid. A gateway for facilitating an integration of process equipment within an industrial environment supporting an open industry standard is provided. Integration of field devices having characteristics, capabilities, and/or requirements that are expressed by a description language for industrial process equipment such as EDDL, into a contemporary communication environment enabling a direct data access, is supported. The communication environment is operated based on a semantically enriched and graph-based data information model such as provided by OPC UA.

Gateway and method for transforming a description of an industrial process equipment into a data information model

A system and a method for exchanging data between a server and a client in an industrial data network, wherein the server employs a first information model for information interchange and the client employs a second information model for information interchange, where the method includes converting the first and the second information models in a first and a second machine-interpretable description, deducing similarities between elements of the first and the second machine-interpretable description, proposing and implementing a mapping of at least one element of the first information model to an element of the second information model based on the deduced similarities in text and in structure and, employing, by a gateway entity, the mapping for a data exchange between the server and the client such that the semantic mapping of virtually any input, vendor-specific metadata, and any output model (including OPC UA-based models) is achieved.

System and method for exchanging data between a server and a client in an industrial data network

The present invention relates to a method for composing an application using a plurality of distributed interaction patterns including services, events, actions and properties. A second semantic model or Thing Recipe is provided as a basis for representing the application. This Thing Recipe provides a concept for orchestration or choreography of interaction patterns distributed across a network. The process from a specification of the Thing Recipe to its deployment is considerable shorter than the implementation and orchestration of web service. The Thing Recipe is not only interpretable but also executable. The semantic approach of the Thing Recipe enables a formal representation capable of a machine-based discovery of the application functionality and, at the same time, a machine interpretation and execution. This means that a Thing Recipe can be directly executed in any device that has an embedded runtime with reasoning capabilities.

Composing an application using a plurality of distributed interaction patterns

The embodiments proposed herein provide a simplified configuration of an industrial entity and an application design development using a visual programming environment. The concept is based on graphical representation of semantic models as configurable entity icons. An entity icon corresponding to a semantic configuration template acts as a template for an atomic capability of an industrial entity providing a configuration that is consistent with preconfigured solutions of the semantic model. The entity icon may be customized according to a device specification of the industrial entity by configuring one or more attributes according to the device specifications. The configuration act is guided and validated. One or more configured entity icons may be used to describe capabilities of an industrial entity or to create an IoT application template.

Methods for generating a semantic description of a composite interaction

A method for amending or adding functionality to an automation device in an automation systems domain is provided. A semantic representation is provided as a basis for representing the functionality to be amended or added. The semantic model for semantically representing the functionality is not only interpretable but also executable. A machine interpretation and execution is carried out by a semantic reasoner and an event processing engine, respectively, which are both part of a runtime environment implemented on the automation device. The need of implementing a code skeleton is eliminated by an engineer. Instead, the semantic model may be directly executed in a device that has an embedded runtime with reasoning capabilities.

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Munich, Germany

Darko Anicic