The high number of devices with limited computational resources as well as limited communication resources are two characteristics of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). With Industry 4.0 emerges a strong demand for data processing in the edge, constrained primarily by the limited available resources. In industry, deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is increasingly used in robotics, job shop scheduling and supply chain. In this work, DRL is applied for intelligent resource allocation for industrial edge devices. An optimal usage of available resources of the IIoT devices should be achieved. Due to the structure of IIoT systems as well as security aspects, multi-agent systems (MASs) are preferred for decentralized decision-making. In our study, we build a network from physical and virtualized representative IIoT devices. The proposed approach is capable of dealing with several dynamic changes of the target system. Three aspects are considered when evaluating the performance of the MASs: overhead due to the MASs, improvement of the resource usage of the devices as well as latency and error rate. In summary, the agents’ resource usage with respect to traffic, computing resources and time is very low. It was confirmed that the agents not only achieve the desired results in training but also that the learned behavior is transferable to a real system.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

With the convergence of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) in Industry 4.0, edge computing is increasingly relevant in the context of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). While the use of simulation is already the state of the art in almost every engineering discipline, e.g., dynamic systems, plant engineering, and logistics, it is less common for edge computing. This work discusses different use cases concerning edge computing in IIoT that can profit from the use of OT simulation methods. In addition to enabling machine learning, the focus of this work is on the virtual commissioning of data stream processing systems. To evaluate the proposed approach, an exemplary application of the middleware layer, i.e., a multi-agent reinforcement learning system for intelligent edge resource allocation, is combined with a physical simulation model of an industrial plant. It confirms the feasibility of the proposed use of simulation for virtual commissioning of an industrial edge computing system using Hardware-in-the-Loop. In summary, edge computing in IIoT is highlighted as a new application area for existing simulation methods from the OT perspective. The benefits in IIoT are exemplified by various use cases for the logic or middleware layer using physical simulation of the target environment. The relevance for real-life IIoT systems is confirmed by an experimental evaluation, and limitations are pointed out.