CPS-based hierarchical and self-similar automation architecture for the control and verification of reconfigurable manufacturing systems

Fast evolving requirements for the manufacturing sectors, which must now take much more into account problems such as product customization, markets volatility and shortening life cycles, imposes to focus the attention of innovation towards a new generation of automation systems based on the CPS paradigm. The work here presented therefore suggest a new extension of the Cyber-Physical Systems functionalities through the definition of their Avatar, virtual counterpart of the physical system that, based on semantic, simulation and control models, enables a much more reconfigurable and performance optimizing self-similar and hierarchical automation architecture. Having identified the major research challenges to be tackled to create this vision, an intermediate step of implementation is presented, where state-of-the-art technologies have been adopted as partial enablers of the proposed CPS architecture and corresponding engineering tools. An industrial-level application serves as test- bed for the approach.