IEC 61499 is the newly adopted stanard for distributed control systems and follows on from the IEC 61131 standard for programmable logic controllers (PLCs). This book discusses real-time execution of the models defined in the IEC 61499 standard with a closer look at predictable, event-triggered real-time systems.

Manufacturing industries are experiencing rapidly changing global markets and thus face an increasing demand for flexible adaptable production systems. The text guides the reader in understanding how to design and reconfigure control applications at the real-time control layer of the automation system.

The author describes how to introduce reconfiguration to existing as well as new software architectures and how to support reconfiguration in an execution environment.

This book targets control, automation, and software engineers intending to develop distributed flexible industrial automation systems, as well as developers of adaptable embedded systems.

IEC 61499 is the newly adopted standard for distributed control systems and follows on from the IEC 61131 standard for programmable logic controllers (PLC). Part of the ISA/O3neida series on distributed industrial automation, this book is a practical guide for component-based development of distributed embedded and control systems as proposed by the new international standard. Each chapter is designed as an independent study unit, making the book ideal for use in university courses, industrial training, or self-study. Working knowledge of the IEC 61499 standard can be achieved in approximately 10 to 15 learning hours. For the control, automation, or software engineer and the embedded systems developer, this book provides concrete directions on how to specify and implement a distributed system according to the IEC 61499 standard and how to create an IEC 61499-compliant control device. The text also sheds some light on the broader embedded systems arena since the IEC 61499 standard provides the higher level (yet executable!) abstraction appropriate for model-based engineering of distributed embedded systems.

New technologies and standards are emerging which will have a dramatic effect on the design and implementation of future industrial control systems. PLCs and PC-based soft controllers are beginning to use software components, such as object-oriented technology, to bring together the hitherto different worlds of factory automation and business systems. New tools and techniques are needed to design and model these systems, such as UML and modern fieldbus technology. The new IEC 61499 standard has been developed to model distributed control systems, defining concepts and models so that software in the form of function blocks can be interconnected to define the behaviour of a distributed control system. Tools based on IEC 61499 are likely to emerge soon to model, validate and simulate the behaviour of complex networks of function blocks and it is expected that this standard will become key to complex distributed systems.