Special Session

The IEC 61499 Function Block Model in Control and Automation

The world’s 1st Special Session on IEC61499

 

Special Session Report

 

ETFA’07 (25-28 Sept) hosted the 2nd in the ETFA series, Special Session on the IEC61499 Function Block model. This Special Session was an attempt to bring again leading research groups from academia and industry together to present their latest work, exchange ideas and propose solutions to the open issues of this standard. Like the 1st SS in Prague, this SS was one of the most successful sessions of the ETFA’07 conference and attracted a wide interest from academia and industry.

 

The live demonstration of ISaGRAF attracted the interest of almost all ETFA’07 participants.

 

IEC 61499 is a key standard towards an open market in the control and automation domain. It is the proposal of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) to address the demand for distribution and interoperability in today’s complex control and automation Systems. It exploits current software engineering practices such as the object technology and component based development to improve the development process of distributed control systems.

 

 

However, several issues are still open for the standard to be adopted by industry. Significant progress should be obtained in the verification process of the design models, the development of flexible and reliable execution environments, the deployment and the reconfiguration process.

 

 

 

 

Research groups from Vienna University of Technology, Helsinki University of Technology, University of Hanover, ICS Triplex Inc., PROFACTOR GmbH, Holobloc Inc., TCS-NZ Ltd, Massey University, University of Kaiserslautern, Institute of Industrial Technologies and Automation – CNR Milan Italy, CIMSI Institute, SUPSI - University of Applied Siences Switzerland,and University of Patras,presented their latest work on the IEC 61499 standard. 

 

We thank all participants for their hard work, co-operation and commitment. It is they who have made this 2nd Special Session on IEC61499 a success and made us to decide to organize the 3rd Special Session on IEC61499 during ETFA’07 (http://www2.hsu-hh.de/aut/) at Hamburg, Germany.

 

Kleanthis Thramboulidis

Special Session Organizer

Software Engineering Group (SEG), University of Patras, Greece

 

Special Session Structure in brief

SS01A: The IEC 61499 Function Block Model in Control and Automation

SS01B: IEC 61499 Implementations

SS01C: ISaGRAF live Demonstration on IEC 61499

SS01D: IEC 61499 Example Applications

SS01E: Posters

Social Events

 

For the Special Session program see

http://seg.ece.upatras.gr/seg/dev/ETFA07SS/ETFA07-SS01Programme.htm