A Generic Framework for Resource-Limited Microcontrollers Deployment in I-IoT Systems

Incorporating various AI-controlled devices coupled with a human-centric focus in the industrial process has revolutionized the industry, leading the shift from Industry 4.0 to Industry 5.0. Devices like sensors and actuators lack essential computational resources. Thus, they rely on microcontrollers to be networked to send and receive data. The proliferation of a broad palette of inexpensive, resource-limited microcontrollers has motivated industries to integrate them into their industrial processes or to build industrial prototypes. However, installing and networking those microcontrollers in factory areas is tedious and has many critical requirements at various security, technical, scalability, flexibility, and data flow levels. It also poses additional challenges in terms of writing software for the microcontrollers, involving a lot of manual work, hardcoding, and complex configurations to allow for proper and secure communication with subscribed data consumers. This paper introduces a novel generic framework and software components addressing the mentioned challenges. This generic framework enables configuring and networking of microcontrollers and IIoT devices in the deployment phase at the field and edge levels, achieving more security, flexibility, and scalability.