Dynamically Wiring CPPS Software Architectures

Modern cyber-physical production systems require a software-intensive integration at the shopfloor, such as machines, transport systems, worker assistance systems, and robots. Alongside the interaction of participants at the physical level exists another level of interactions at the software level: the distributed software architecture of the cyber-physical production system (CPPS). Contemporary CPPSs require frequent changes in communication paths and the signals communicated (i.e., rewiring) to flexibly adapt to changing production needs and environmental conditions. The integration of shopfloor participants and their wiring, hence, becomes a critical aspect of a dynamically adaptable production system. Here, incomplete and incorrect wiring is a major source of errors. To this end, this paper presents a light weight approach for wiring shopfloor participants that utilizes decentralized wiring information to extract/recover the distributed software architecture of the CPPS. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach on a lab-scale production cell model.