Flexible, scalable, and robust architecture for industrial automation applications with real-time requirements

With the outbreak of the fourth industrial revolution, industrial automation applications demand a more flexible, scalable, and robust architecture than the one proposed in the ISA-95 standard. In addition, the high availability demanded by industrial processes hinders maintenance and updating tasks that go against information security policies. To address these challenges, some frameworks supported by virtualization and information distribution technologies have been generated for industrial automation systems. However, these proposals lack the means to implement real-time task scheduling algorithms, so it is difficult to migrate developments already implemented under these requirements. In this work, we present a microservices-based architecture that integrates virtualization technologies, a robust middleware for the communication layer, and a priority-based task scheduler. It also describes the implementation of this architecture using low-cost hardware components and free software, to be subsequently tested on a pressure control process in a laboratory setting. The obtained results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed architecture and meeting of real-time requirements, which enables supporting the diverse current industrial automation applications requirements, addressing the challenges of migration to Industry 4.0, and incorporating new functionalities.