Structural modeling of industrial wireless sensor and actuator networks for reconfigurable mechatronic systems

Abstract

Recently, the globalization of manufacturing industry systems has led to increase the competition in order to response to today's demanding market especially in medium-size companies. The global competition requires the manufacturing systems to be flexible and reconfigurable specifically in the shop floor level where mechatronic devices reside. In this paper, a novel methodology for the development and structural modeling of industrial wireless sensors and actuators is presented in order to provide flexibility and reconfigurability to the mechatronic devices. The proposed methodology is based on the implementation of the IEC 61499 standard for the distributed control of mechatronic systems. The methodology also addresses the existing problems of this standard for capturing the system requirements in the development process. For this reason, the Unified Modeling Language is used in order to overcome this problem. A case study is presented in order to demonstrate the operational aspects of the proposed methodology.