Factory monitoring and control using the Internet

In this tutorial the author explores the premise that the Internet and the World Wide Web, when combined with the software tools developed to support electronic commerce, are the enabling factors for achieving remote factory monitoring and control (and, ultimately, industrial control in general). We look briefly at the issues of: system architecture; web protocols and services; wired and wireless access; Java programming; Jini lookup services; multimedia; multicast; privacy and security; reliability; factory monitoring; instrument control; and the research challenges for fast, closed-loop, real-time control.