The modular TORERO IEC 61499 engineering platform - Eclipse in automation

The current situation in automation is characterised by an ongoing trend towards distributed systems based on intelligent devices, the application of Web services and the usage of Ethernet as the main communication media. The most important standard to deal with distributed control systems (DCSs) is the IEC 61499 whose industrial application is still at the beginning. Within this paper, a platform for DCSs based on the open source framework Eclipse will be presented. The platform implements the DCS's methodology realised by specific tools in the form of plug-ins covering the whole life cycle of a control system, ranging from the engineering process to the maintenance process during runtime of the system. A core functionality of the engineering platform is the function block system designer supporting the IEC 61499 standard