With the growing adoption of the IEC 61499 standard, heterogeneous distributed automation systems have become increasingly feasible in modern industry. Compared to traditional automation systems based on Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), IEC 61499 open automation systems could be deployed to various platforms, such as low-cost ARM-based controllers, edge computing nodes, and even cloud servers. This trend raises a critical challenge in distribution optimization of automation software components. In particular, unlike IEC 61131, IEC 61499 supports event-based execution and software-hardware decoupling. It is easier to implement resource-demanding tasks in IEC 61499, such as artificial intelligence and embedded IT software, which makes computing-intensive control software distribution optimization more needed today.This work proposes a framework that optimizes the distribution of various resource-demanding control components in distributed automation systems. By leveraging a script-based auto-benchmarking system, a comprehensive computing performance knowledge base is established. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms other distribution combinations, significantly reducing the overall execution time of the system.

The significance of virtual commissioning for automation control systems is heightened by their increasing complexity and, frequently, their distributed nature. The authors propose a cloud-based testing framework that facilitates remote execution of tests over the Internet. This allows for collaboration among a variety of stakeholders while optimizing the use of computational resources. This framework is based on a scalable and fault-tolerant architecture, which maintains system responsiveness and efficiency even under concurrent usage by multiple users. The integration of this testing framework with the CloViC cloud virtual commissioning platform further increases its capabilities, providing enhancements to existing project administration, performance monitoring of virtual PLCs, and collaborative analysis across teams and projects, with Kubernetes orchestration optimizing system performance. To validate the proposed methodology, a group of students used the automated testing framework as part of their coursework.

In this paper, we propose a cloud-based virtual commissioning Web platform for IEC 61499 compliant distributed automation systems that support Create-Read-Update-Delete operations for SoftPLC containers from various versions and provide a remote engineering workstation with an embedded web Integrated Development Environment (IDE), Human Machine Interface (HMI), and 3D simulation models. A water tank use case demonstrates the platform's flexibility, enabling control software testing entirely via a Web browser without local installations.

The need of manufacturing industries to adapt to the demand from customers and the volatile market drives the need for digitalization to realize the so-called smart factory. Smart factory, Compared to traditional factories, smart factory needs to possess high flexibility and stability and often has to employ digital twin. Compared to IEC 61131-3 standard used in traditional industrial production, IEC 61499 standard can bring more advantages to meet the realization of Smart Factory, such as flexibility, distribution and event-driven execution. In this paper, we propose a new Virtual Commissioning (VC) architecture for IEC 61499-based control applications. We build an online collaborative VC platform with the help of cloud computing and containerization technologies. Furthermore, we discuss and propose the utilization of soft-PLC containers from different vendors to meet users’ commissioning requirements for different hardware configurations. Compared with the traditional offline single-person debugging method, our proposed architecture can improve the flexibility, collaboration and efficiency of control software debugging in a more interactive and collaborative style via the online platform we implemented.