Towards Model-driven, Simulation-assisted Control Application

Engineering

A Doctoral Research Path

Timo Vepsäläinen

Tampere University of Technology, Department of Automation Science and Engineering,

P.O. Box 692, 33101, Tampere, Finland

Keywords: Model-driven Engineering, Simulations, Model Transformations, Automation and Control.

Abstract: This paper, intended to the doctoral consortium of the Simultech 2013 conference, describes the problems,

methodologies, objectives and status of doctoral research of the author. The research conforms to the

constructive approach of design science within the application domain of industrial automation and control.

The focus of the research is on model-driven, simulation-assisted engineering of automation and control

applications with consideration of both basic control and safety-related control systems. The general

research question to be answered is whether or not automation and control application development can

benefit from model-driven engineering and the techniques enabled by it. The answer will be based on

answers to smaller research questions related to industrial applicability of the general developed modelling

approach, ability to simulate models at design-time and ability to include safety documentation in models.

1 INTRODUCTION

Complex industrial processes related to

manufacturing, process and energy sector plants as

well as machinery applications require continuous

control, coordination and supervision to ensure their

productivity and safety. Currently, the main

implementation technology of such control systems

is software. With dedicated hardware, e.g. PLC

(Programmable Logic Controller) or DCS

(Distributed Control System) platforms, buses and

distributed I/O units, software has replaced earlier

implementation technologies of control functions

such as analogous and non-programmable

electronics.

Software solutions are flexible and efficient by

nature. They enable control and coordination of

several devices and sub-systems from a single or

few processing units. Software solutions can be

further developed and updated even without changes

to hardware. Software enables the use of

sophisticated control algorithms that may require,

for example, on-line optimization. Use of software

also enables the reuse of existing solutions in form

of libraries of re-usable classes, modules or function

blocks. However, at the same time, the challenges

related to software development have increased.

The development of a control application for an

industrial process is a complex task that requires

collaboration with and information from

professionals of multidisciplinary backgrounds, e.g.

process, control, hydraulics and electrical

engineering. Control applications are often

characterized with high real-timeliness,

dependability, safety and other quality requirements.

As a consequence, and because of the focal role of

software applications, the efficiency of control

application development process has become an

essential competitiveness factor for industrial

players in the domain. Exploring possibilities to

improve efficiency of automation and control

application development is also a profound objective

of the doctoral research.

In general, the research is based on the

assumption that efficiency of software development

can be improved by reducing the total amount of

required work per produced application. This can be

accomplished by re-using existing work when

possible as well as by reducing the amount of non-

profitable and manual work. Re-use may be

accomplished by, for example, designing and using

re-usable controllers whereas reducing the amount

Vepsäläinen T. (2013).

Towards Model-driven, Simulation-assisted Control Application Engineering - A Doctoral Research Path.

In Doctoral Consortium, pages 12-19

DOI: 10.5220/0004637200120019

 SciTePress

of non-profitable work by use of automated

information transfer between development phases.

The engineering process of applications should thus

enable fluent re-use of both existing general

knowledge and libraries of parameterizable solutions

that can be applied to recurring design tasks.

Applications and solutions should also be validated

and verified as early as possible in order to minimize

the effect of errors and design flaws to subsequent

work and accordingly to the amount of repeated

work. A means to assess the behaviour and

characteristics of solutions early – preferably at

design-time - is to apply simulation.

In this research, the foundation for seeking

means to improve the efficiency of automation and

control application development is Model-Driven

Engineering (MDE). Related supporting techniques

that are utilized in the research include UML,

application domain specific profiles, especially

UML Automation Profile (UML AP) as well as

model transformations for partially automating the

processing of models. Original introduction to UML

AP is presented in (Ritala and Kuikka, 2007).

The idea of MDE and related approaches, e.g.

MDA (Model-Driven Architecture) of OMG (Object

Management Group, 2008), is the utilization of

models during development of systems instead of,

for example, documents. In MDE, models

conforming to formally specified modelling

languages (e.g. UML) can be processed with model

transformations to create new or revise existing

models and views. Automated model checks may

reveal problems and inconsistencies in models and

between modelled phase products. Model

transformations can be used to automate importing

information to models from models of preceding

development phases and tools. Design models can

be used for generating code or creating analysis

models to be studied with domain specific, proven

tools. Lastly, as have been already shown within the

doctoral research, model transformations can be

used to automate generation of simulation models

that enable assessing and comparing the developed

solutions at design-time.

In addition to basic automation and control, a

special application area in the research is software

development for safety systems. Safety-related

systems require consideration of sophisticated

standards including their requirements for

development and documentation deliverables. As a

consequence, if the focus of development work is

shifted from documents to models according to the

principles of MDE, models should be tailored to

produce at least part of the required safety

documentation. In addition to basic control, we

regard simulations useful also in the development of

safety systems although it is acknowledged that

simulations are only a part of the solution. Like use

of testing techniques, simulations cannot guarantee

formal correctness of applications. That is why all

the documentation required by safety standards must

still be produced to be used in certification.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows.

Section 2 presents and discusses the current state of

the art related to the research area. In section 3, a

more detailed presentation of the research problems

and objectives will be provided. Section 4 focuses

on the research methodology and the approaches to

assess research results that are used in the doctoral

research. Lastly, before conclusions, the current

stage of the research and the results still expected to

be achieved will be presented in section 5.

2 STATE OF THE ART

Utilization of models and model-based techniques

for automation and control application development

has been studied and proposed by several

researchers. Most of the approaches have been

targeted for IEC 61131-3 or IEC 61499 based

development. IEC 61131-3 is currently also

industrially widely used language - in addition to

proprietary DCS systems and languages. Related to

IEC 61131-3, such work has been presented in, for

example, (Vogel-Heuser et al., 2005). Related to

IEC 61499, which has drawn extensive research

attention, such work has been carried out, for

example, in MEDEIA project, by Tranoris and

Thramboulidis and by Dubinin et al.

Vogel-Heuser et al. (2005), firstly, present an

approach and mappings for generating IEC 61131-3

applications from UML models. The target code is

in the approach in the forms of structured text and

sequential function charts and can be imported to

IEC 61131-3 tools using text import. The modelling

approach utilizes class diagrams for presenting code

structure and state charts for behaviour.

The MEDEIA (project) approach, is presented in

(Strasser et al. 2008). The approach is based on

Automation Components (AC) that are combinations

of embedded hardware and software including

integrated simulation, verification and diagnostics

services. ACs can be deployed to hardware with

code generation. The simulation approach of the

project is discussed in (Hegny et al., 2010)

Dubinin et al. (2005) aim to support the

development of function block (FB) applications

TowardsModel-driven,Simulation-assistedControlApplicationEngineering-ADoctoralResearchPath

conforming to IEC 61499 with an UML-FB

language. The language is an extension of UML and

based on its stereotype mechanism. The approach

utilizes UML class (classes corresponding to IEC

61499 FBs), sequence, cooperation as well as state

diagrams. Introduction to the code generation in the

paper mainly focuses on class diagrams.

Thramboulidis and Tranoris have studied and

developed a tool (Thramboulidis and Tranoris, 2004)

and an engineering process (Tranoris and

Thramboulidis, 2006) for distributed control

applications using UML to present requirements and

design before final implementations. In their

development process, plain UML is used for

describing all the features of function blocks and

applications consisting of them. The process also

utilizes model transformations for moving from

analysis models to design diagrams and models.

Integrating simulations to MDE of control

software is not generally a new idea. Embedded

system and automotive control system industries, for

instance, are in this respect ahead of industrial

control domain. They have already benefitted from

Model-in-the-Loop (MiL), Software-in-the-Loop

(SiL), Processor-in-the-Loop (PiL), and Hardware-

in-the-Loop (HiL) approaches. These general

simulation approaches differ in terms of control

system configuration used in the simulations. For

example, in MiL only a model of the control system

is used to control a process simulation whereas SiL

utilizes generated software and HiL generated

software with entire control system hardware. In the

embedded and automotive system industries the HiL

approach has been used in (Gietelink et al., 2009),

SiL in (Canale et al., 2010) and MiL in (Plummer,

2006), to mention work of just a few researchers.

In the domain of industrial control, integrating

simulations to MDE approaches has not been one of

the first goals. However, such work has been

presented at least in (Yang and Vyatkin, 2012) and

(Hegny et al., 2010). In addition, (Ferrarini and

Dede, 2010) presents a co-simulation approach for

testing already implemented control application

parts while simulating the rest. The approach is

based on co-simulation (co-operative simulation) but

does not necessarily restrict the development process

to have MDE characteristics.

Yang and Vyatkin (2012) do utilize MDE

techniques and model transformations. The purpose

of their approach is to create IEC 61499 based FB

models from Simulink models of the processes to be

controlled in order to enable closed-loop simulations

of the controlled processes with control application

models. In the approach, the control applications are

developed with IEC 61499.

Hegny et al. (2010), similarly, create IEC 61499

plant models to be integrated with control

application models. However, their approach either

transforms the plant models from MEDEIA (project)

specific plant models that conform to a project

specific timed state chart metamodel or uses external

behaviour descriptions, i.e. external simulation tools.

The approach to transform control application

models to models of the processes to be controlled is

- according to the knowledge of the authors - utilized

only in our work, in the industrial automation and

control domain.

Like integrating simulations to MDE in the

domain, developing MDE support for safety systems

and applications has not yet drawn extensive

research attention. Perhaps most complete work in

the area has been carried out in DECOS project

(Huber and Obermeisser, 2007). In DECOS, IEC

61508 is used as a goal similarly to the work of the

author. However, the modelling languages differ

significantly. The DECOS approach utilizes e.g.

Simulink and SCADE whereas the purpose of the

author is to use UML and its extension to the

automation domain: UML AP. In addition, as a

difference to the work of the author, in the DECOS

approach also hardware aspects are considered.

In addition, there are several approaches in

various domains to integrate safety information to

UML and SysML based modelling. (Guillerm et al.,

2010) discusses the use of SysML to address

requirements definition, traceability as well as

verification and validation in system engineering

process, which are all of importance in safety system

development. The paper proposes the use of UML

and SysML and extends the languages with

stereotypes related to documenting risks of the

underlying system.

In (Biehl et al., 2010), an attempt is made to

integrate safety analysis to model-based

development for automation industry. The paper

presents an automated transformation from EAST-

ADL2 to HiP-HOPS in order to automate

performing safety-analysis on refined models. As

such, the approach mainly focuses in automating

safety analysis after changes to design models.

The UML Profile for developing Airworthiness-

Compliant Safety Critical Software is presented in

(Zoughbi et al., 2007). The work intends to extract

the key safety-related concepts from RTCA DO-

178B standard into a UML profile and to use them

to facilitate the communication between different

stakeholders in software development. One of the

purposes of the profile is to make requirements more

SIMULTECH2013-DoctoralConsortium

understandable to all stakeholders, which is a similar

goal than those of the author. However, instead of

focusing to requirements specification and

occurrences of hazards, the profile aims to aid

communication by enabling the use of concepts of

the standard in models to characterize modelled

parts of the systems.

Lastly, the safety analysis profile (Douglass,

2009) has been developed to support development of

safety critical software so that safety professionals

would not have to rely on disparate tools to capture

requirements and design. According to the paper,

UML can facilitate the development of safety critical

systems in several ways. The means to facilitate the

development work include: providing design clarity,

modelling of architectural and low-level

redundancy, creating safety-relevant views on

design and requirements as well as aiding safety

analysis. With the profile presented by Douglass,

safety analysis can be accomplished in models and

interconnected to requirements.

3 RESEARCH PROBLEMS

AND OBJECTIVES

Currently, modelling and simulation is in automation

and control domain used especially for describing

and studying process dynamics and control

algorithms. Models, however, are mostly based on

mathematics (e.g. Matlab based Simulink) and do

not suit well for software development. The

modelling concepts of e.g. Simulink differ from

those of software development and programming

languages. As a consequence, although such models

could be used for code generation, the resulting code

would be difficult to maintain and integrate to

manually developed parts of control applications.

Another aspect is that the models should also

support, for example, importing information from

preceding development phases and producing

documentation. And for such purposes, extendable

modelling languages such as UML form a more

natural basis.

In the doctoral research, the focus is in modelling

and MDE techniques for software development in

the automation and control domain. The basic

research question to be answered is whether or not

automation and control application development can

benefit from MDE and the techniques enabled by it,

e.g. integrated simulation. The answer will be based

on answers of smaller research questions. It also

produces research prototypes for evaluating the

techniques and solutions. A more detailed,

presentation of the smaller research questions will be

provided below.

Automation applications are already often

composed of parameterizable, platform specific

components (e.g. function blocks) that are well-

tested functional entities. This facilitates the

development and improves the re-use of working,

well-tested solutions but makes it difficult to re-use

design work on other platforms. In this research, the

purpose is to seek an approach for modelling of

automation and control applications. The modelling

approach should enable fluent re-use of

parameterizable implementation blocks and use of

design patterns for facilitating design and for

documentation purposes. Additionally, the

modelling approach should enable the use of model

transformations that are necessary in applying MDE

in all development phases.

Related to simulations, the research is aimed to

answer the questions: how simulation integration

can be supported in MDE environments, which

general simulation approach (e.g. model-in-the-loop

and co-simulation) should be used and what are the

possible benefits compared to the present simulation

support available in the industry. It is acknowledged

that simulations are already supported by

commercial PLC and DCS platform. However, the

research asserts that it would be possible to obtain

additional benefits from integrating simulations to

the development process.

Related to the development of safety-related

systems, the modelling concepts must take into

account the requirements of safety standards. In this

research, the essential functional safety standard to

be used is IEC 61508 (IEC, 2010) which is also

referenced by other, application domain specific

standards in both process industry and machinery.

The industrially significant question that needs to be

addressed before applying MDE techniques to

industrial safety system development is: how the

strict requirements and documentation needs of

safety standards could be fulfilled with MDE

techniques. In the doctoral research, the aim is to

prove possible to integrate risk and hazards analysis

to the MDE process and to produce certification

friendly information from models to support

traceability, correctness and completeness within

models. Traceability is an important characteristic

for also basic control applications to facilitate

inspection and review processes of the applications.

In addition to answering these research

questions, an objective of the research is to produce

prototypical tools for demonstrating the techniques

TowardsModel-driven,Simulation-assistedControlApplicationEngineering-ADoctoralResearchPath

and modelling concepts and to assess their possible

benefits. The tools are aimed to be developed using

open-source modelling and model transformation

tools of the Eclipse platform as a basis. Such tools,

e.g. Topcased and SmartQVT are based on standards

of OMG including UML, MOF and QVT, and can

be extended with new modelling concepts and to

implement required model transformations.

As a whole, the research aims to complete the

AUKOTON design process (Hästbacka et al., 2011)

with simulation capabilities as well as support for re-

use and processing safety information. The

improved design process is illustrated in figure 1.

Figure 1: The results of the research will implement a

simulation assisted, MDE process for automation and

control applications based on open-source tools.

4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The research included in the doctoral studies

conforms to the constructive approach of design

science. The application domain is industrial

automation and control application development. In

general, the research needs that the research aims to

fulfil are based on interviews of industrial

professionals and internationally reported

challenges. In the Automation Software Engineering

(ASE) research group to which the author belongs,

the industrial partners include both industrial control

system vendors as well as companies developing

automation and control solutions for their machine

products.

The research, as constructive design also in

general, aims to meet the research problems and

needs, with technical solutions that are defined and

implemented as research prototypes. Solutions and

their implementing prototypes are evaluated and

further developed with case studies and industrial

assessment events. Both methods enable collecting

material and evidence on the possible benefits and

disadvantages of the solutions. The research

questions are then answered based on the results of

the case studies as well as collected and analysed

material, observations and feedback from the

industrial assessments. In addition to gathering

industrial feedback, assessments events also serve

the purpose of transferring and demonstrating

research results and new technologies to the

industrial partners.

In the research of the ASE research group, the

assessment events serve mainly collecting

qualitative material on the suitability of the solutions

and their implementations. For example, for

(Vepsäläinen et al., 2010) we arranged a 1-day event

with our research partners in university premises. In

the event, 8 industrial professionals from 4 different

companies developed a control application for a

small-scale process industry process using research

prototype tools developed by us during AUKOTON

project. During the event, the professionals were

observed and field notes were collected from

technical and other kind of problems and challenges

that they encountered in their work. After

completing their design tasks the professionals, who

were at that time already familiar with the

techniques, were interviewed. The purpose of the

interviews was to assess the suitability of the

techniques to industrial use in the companies and the

possible advantages and disadvantages in

comparison to techniques used in the companies at

the time of the interviews.

An example of assessing developed techniques,

concepts and prototype implementations with case

studies is presented in (Vepsäläinen and Kuikka,

2013a). The contribution of the paper is two-fold.

The first one is a conceptual comparison of

approaches to enable design-time simulations within

MDE taking into account, for example, the amount

of required model transformations and configuration

work to execute simulation cases. The second

contribution is an analysis of perceived benefits and

disadvantages of the approach encountered with

three published simulation experiments.

The benefits of using two kinds of methods to

assess the research and developed solutions are

significant. Case studies, firstly, can be targeted to

academically interesting problems and to assess the

research against the industrial state of the art and

work of other researchers. Assessment events, on the

other hand, are more related to industrial practice

and enable both collecting industrial feedback and

keeping the research focused to problems with

practical relevance. With both assessment methods,

the research has focused on qualitative material.

Consequently, for example, possible net effect of the

techniques to the amount of development work has

not yet been estimated. However, such studies could

SIMULTECH2013-DoctoralConsortium

be also arranged when the prototype tools are at a

level on which the results would not be biased by

usability challenges of prototype tools in comparison

to commercial tools.

5 CURRENT STAGE

OF THE RESEARCH

AND EXPECTED RESULTS

Currently, the doctoral research is at a stage in

which all the research questions have been addressed

to some extent although most of them still require

work and supporting publications. The modelling

approach including use of library implementation

blocks in code generation has been addressed in

(Hästbacka et al., 2011). The results of industrial

assessment of the approach, on the other hand, have

been presented in (Vepsäläinen et al., 2010).

Use of re-usable simulation blocks and the

general approach to transform functional models to a

simulateable ModelicaML (Modelica Modeling

Language) (Schamai, 2009) form have been

addressed in (Vepsäläinen and Kuikka, 2013b). The

design-time simulation of control applications is

intended to cover all the common aspects of basic

control systems including sequential control,

interlockings as well as binary and feedback control.

Of these aspects, interlockings as well as feedback

control are covered in (Vepsäläinen and Kuikka,

2013b). Sequential control and binary control are

also already supported by the approach; however, a

paper addressing these issues is still to be published.

A brief assessment of the research and perceived

benefits is presented in (Vepsäläinen and Kuikka,

2013a). Additionally, the latter paper presents a

conceptual comparison of possible simulation

approaches for design-time simulation of models

within MDE. The purpose of the comparison is to

draw conclusions on which approach should be

utilized in the domain.

Integration of safety, risk and hazard information

to the MDE process and supporting traceability,

correctness and completeness have been addressed

in (Vepsäläinen and Kuikka, 2011). The article

presents a set of meta-model additions to the

modelling profile, see (Hästbacka et al., 2011) for

introduction to the joint-work on UML AP, to enable

modelling of risks and hazards using Fault Tree (FT)

notation and logic diagrams for presenting detailed

requirements

In (Vepsäläinen et al., 2012) the author has

presented tool support for documenting architectures

of safety systems and performing simple checks of

consistency against safety standards. The work

presents a set of concepts developed for describing

safety system architectures including their

requirements and components as well as used design

patterns and made decisions. However, the work is

based on an application lifecycle management

platform (Polarion ALM) instead of UML profile

assisted modelling. Part of porting this work to

UML-based modelling, in addition to re-using

conceptual design solutions – design patterns – and

using them to aid documentation, is still under

research and to be published. On the other hand, the

research path related to safety applications lacks

assessment of results, which will follow after

finishing the basic work.

At this stage of the Ph.D. research, it is expected

that the general question, whether or not automation

and control application development can benefit

from MDE and the techniques enabled by it, can be

given a positive answer. According to the results of

assessing the industrial applicability of the general

approach (Vepsäläinen et al., 2010) the developed

MDE and modelling process could be used for

developing industrial DCS-based applications.

Practically this could mean targeting platform

specific work for a chosen platform and using code

generation that would be required for each platform.

A more open question is support for general

solutions in form of automation domain specific

design patterns, which is still to be addressed.

Perhaps in most complete stage are the research

questions related to integrating design-time

simulations to MDE. The approach to use model-

transformations for creating closed-loop simulation

models of controlled systems has been shown to

enable simulation of all the common aspects of basic

control systems. The approach is capable of both

using libraries of existing blocks (corresponding to

library implementations) and generating new

simulation blocks based on logic diagram and

automation sequence diagram presentations of

application specific automation functions.

(Vepsäläinen and Kuikka, 2013b)

Related to different simulation approaches, we

have argued that simulations in MDE in the domain

should focus on model-in-the-loop simulations. The

most important reason for this recommendation is

that industrial control system platforms already

support later simulation approaches e.g. software-in-

the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop simulations.

Consequently, in order to obtain additional benefits

from enabling simulations within the development

process, simulations should be possible to perform

TowardsModel-driven,Simulation-assistedControlApplicationEngineering-ADoctoralResearchPath

earlier. Practically, this would mean MiL

simulations. On the other hand, transforming control

application models instead of plant models or using

co-simulation may lead to fewer difficulties and less

additional work with simulation cases, as presented

in (Vepsäläinen and Kuikka, 2013a).

Related to perceived benefits of applying early

MiL simulations, they have been found useful in

comparing and prototyping alternative control and

interlocking approaches, testing sequences as well as

finding acceptable controller tunings. Simulations

have helped finding missing implementations and

requirements as well as testing exceptions that could

be dangerous to test with the actual physical

processes. Additionally, the simulation approach has

been shown to scale to control applications of

different industries and sizes. (Vepsäläinen and

Kuikka, 2013a)

Integrating safety information to the

development process is the least complete part of the

research at present. However, some expected results

can be still pointed out based on publications and

on-going work of porting the results of (Vepsäläinen

et al., 2012) to the modelling environment.

Currently, the support for traceability illustrated in

(Vepsäläinen et al., 2012) has already been

implemented to complement the work presented in

(Vepsäläinen and Kuikka, 2011). The current focus

is on design patterns and partially automating their

use.

In addition to facilitating development work,

design patterns and pattern instance markings are

expected to serve documentation purposes. Pattern

instance markings enable pointing out where in

design recommended solutions and patterns have

been used. On the other hand, (some) design patterns

could be given Safety Integrity Level (SIL)

recommendations based on IEC 61508 (IEC, 2010).

Such recommendations could then be used to

implement simple checks of consistency against

safety standards and modelled safety integrity level

requirements of the applications being developed.

6 SUMMARY

AND CONCLUSIONS

This paper is intended to present the research

problems, methodologies, objectives, status and

expected results of doctoral research of the author.

The research included in the doctoral studies

conforms to the constructive approach of design

science within the application domain of industrial

automation and control. The general research

question to be answered is whether or not

automation and control application development can

benefit from MDE and the techniques enabled by it.

The research question is to be answered based on

answers to smaller research questions. These

questions are related to modelling of automation and

control applications, ability to integrate and gain

benefits from integrating simulations to the

development process and ability to include safety

documentation in models.

Currently, the research is at a stage in which all

the research questions have been addressed to some

extent although most of them still require work and

supporting publications. Generally, it is expected

that the main research question can be given a

positive answer. This expectation is based on the

promising assessment results of the general

development approach and the ability to generate

closed-loop simulation models of controlled

systems. The approach creates and integrates control

system parts to existing simulation models of the

process to be controlled based on UML AP software

models. In our experiments, the approach has been

found useful in many ways and it has scaled to

applications of both machinery and process industry.

Open questions of the research are related to

integrating safety documentation to models and

automating utilization of design patterns. This work

path that aims to utilize design patterns for both re-

use and documentation purposes is still partially

under development, to be published and to be

assessed based on case studies or industrial

assessments.

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TowardsModel-driven,Simulation-assistedControlApplicationEngineering-ADoctoralResearchPath