Abstract: Various embodiments include a gateway for transforming a data model of a manufacturing process equipment into an industrial information model for automation purposes. The gateway may include: a parsing module for parsing information entities in the data model of the manufacturing process equipment applying a communication protocol of the data model; a semantic mapping engine for transforming the information entities into the industrial information model, the semantic mapping engine using a runtime environment for executing knowledge-based mapping rules; an interface module for providing access to the industrial information model; a mapping knowledge unit including a mapping rule base for maintaining one or more declarative mapping rules; and a mapping compiler for transforming the declarative mapping rules into executable code, for compiling the executable code into knowledge-based mapping rules and for feeding the knowledge-based mapping rules into the runtime environment of the semantic mapping engine.

Abstract: Various teachings of the present disclosure include methods and/or systems for transforming an ontology pertaining to a component of an industrial automation control system into a graph-based information model for automation purposes. The method may include: retrieving a node class of said ontology and expressing said node class by a node in the graph-based information model; retrieving semantic descriptions of an object property and/or a class of the ontology and expressing the semantic descriptions by a forward reference and an additional backward reference for interconnecting said node with a child node in the graph-based information model; and structuring the graph-based information model using a machine-readable syntax.

Abstract: Various embodiments of the teachings herein include methods for amending or adding machine learning capabilities to an automation device in an automation system. The method may include: 1) providing a capability model of the automation device semantically representing capabilities of the device; 2) providing a machine learning model for semantically representing a machine learning functionality and including a semantic model of a neural network; 3) deploying the machine learning model within the automation device; 4) interpreting a semantic part of the machine learning model using a semantic reasoner and matching requirements of the machine learning model with device capabilities inferred by the capability model; and 5) executing the machine learning functionalities on the automation device.

Abstract: A system and a method for exchanging data between a server and a client in an industrial data network, wherein the server employs a first information model for information interchange and the client employs a second information model for information interchange, where the method includes converting the first and the second information models in a first and a second machine-interpretable description, deducing similarities between elements of the first and the second machine-interpretable description, proposing and implementing a mapping of at least one element of the first information model to an element of the second information model based on the deduced similarities in text and in structure and, employing, by a gateway entity, the mapping for a data exchange between the server and the client such that the semantic mapping of virtually any input, vendor-specific metadata, and any output model (including OPC UA-based models) is achieved.

Abstract: Modern industrial processes demand flexibility in terms of how data flows are structured in an automation pyramid. Instead of only upward and downward flows, the data should be accessible directly at each level of the pyramid. A gateway for facilitating an integration of process equipment within an industrial environment supporting an open industry standard is provided. Integration of field devices having characteristics, capabilities, and/or requirements that are expressed by a description language for industrial process equipment such as EDDL, into a contemporary communication environment enabling a direct data access, is supported. The communication environment is operated based on a semantically enriched and graph-based data information model such as provided by OPC UA.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a method for composing an application using a plurality of distributed interaction patterns including services, events, actions and properties. A second semantic model or Thing Recipe is provided as a basis for representing the application. This Thing Recipe provides a concept for orchestration or choreography of interaction patterns distributed across a network. The process from a specification of the Thing Recipe to its deployment is considerable shorter than the implementation and orchestration of web service. The Thing Recipe is not only interpretable but also executable. The semantic approach of the Thing Recipe enables a formal representation capable of a machine-based discovery of the application functionality and, at the same time, a machine interpretation and execution. This means that a Thing Recipe can be directly executed in any device that has an embedded runtime with reasoning capabilities.

Abstract: The embodiments proposed herein provide a simplified configuration of an industrial entity and an application design development using a visual programming environment. The concept is based on graphical representation of semantic models as configurable entity icons. An entity icon corresponding to a semantic configuration template acts as a template for an atomic capability of an industrial entity providing a configuration that is consistent with preconfigured solutions of the semantic model. The entity icon may be customized according to a device specification of the industrial entity by configuring one or more attributes according to the device specifications. The configuration act is guided and validated. One or more configured entity icons may be used to describe capabilities of an industrial entity or to create an IoT application template.

Abstract: A method for amending or adding functionality to an automation device in an automation systems domain is provided. A semantic representation is provided as a basis for representing the functionality to be amended or added. The semantic model for semantically representing the functionality is not only interpretable but also executable. A machine interpretation and execution is carried out by a semantic reasoner and an event processing engine, respectively, which are both part of a runtime environment implemented on the automation device. The need of implementing a code skeleton is eliminated by an engineer. Instead, the semantic model may be directly executed in a device that has an embedded runtime with reasoning capabilities.

Abstract: The embodiments proposed herein provide a simplified configuration of an industrial entity and an application design development using a visual programming environment. The concept is based on graphical representation of semantic models as configurable entity icons. An entity icon corresponding to a semantic configuration template acts as a template for an atomic capability of an industrial entity providing a configuration that is consistent with preconfigured solutions of the semantic model. The entity icon may be customized according to a device specification of the industrial entity by configuring one or more attributes according to the device specifications. The configuration act is guided and validated. One or more configured entity icons may be used to describe capabilities of an industrial entity or to create an IoT application template.

Abstract: Modern industrial processes demand flexibility in terms of how data flows are structured in an automation pyramid. Instead of only upward and downward flows, the data should be accessible directly at each level of the pyramid. A gateway for facilitating an integration of process equipment within an industrial environment supporting an open industry standard is provided. Field devices having characteristics, capabilities and/or requirements that are expressed by a description language for industrial process equipment such as EDDL are integrated into a contemporary communication environment enabling a direct data access. The communication environment is operated based on a semantically enriched and graph-based data information model such as provided by OPC UA.

Abstract: A method for amending or adding functionality to an automation device in an automation systems domain is provided. A semantic representation is provided as a basis for representing the functionality to be amended or added. The semantic model for semantically representing the functionality is not only interpretable but also executable. A machine interpretation and execution is carried out by a semantic reasoner and an event processing engine, respectively, which are both part of a runtime environment implemented on the automation device. The need of implementing a code skeleton is eliminated by an engineer. Instead, the semantic model may be directly executed in a device that has an embedded runtime with reasoning capabilities.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a method for composing an application using a plurality of distributed interaction patterns including services, events, actions and properties. A second semantic model or Thing Recipe is provided as a basis for representing the application. This Thing Recipe provides a concept for orchestration or choreography of interaction patterns distributed across a network. The process from a specification of the Thing Recipe to its deployment is considerable shorter than the implementation and orchestration of web service. The Thing Recipe is not only interpretable but also executable. The semantic approach of the Thing Recipe enables a formal representation capable of a machine-based discovery of the application functionality and, at the same time, a machine interpretation and execution. This means that a Thing Recipe can be directly executed in any device that has an embedded runtime with reasoning capabilities.

Abstract: An automated method for semantically representing a system of uses an ontology design pattern that allows model transformation from a tag representation to an ontological structure and back. Thereby, a tagging-based data model, e.g., according to Haystack Project, is provided for representing at least one of said devices by an entity, wherein each entity is associated by at least one tag. The method includes generating a semantic web representation and integrating the semantic web representation into an ontological model. This integration allows for an easy model instantiation corresponding to annotation with tags from a pre-defined vocabulary which has the advantage of modeling entities with low computational power and, in parallel, maintaining a representation by an ontological graph knowledge on the other hand. The ontological graph knowledge may grant reasoning and search mechanisms by standard interfaces using query languages.