Maintaining a Dynamic View of Semantic Web Services Representing Factory Automation Systems

Abstract

Software agents controlling production devices must maintain an up-to-date view of the physical world state in order to efficiently reason and plan their actions. Especially in a factory automation system, the world state undergoes rapid evolution, and the world view must remain synchronized with the changes. This paper discusses two approaches to updating the world view based on event notifications sent by web services representing production devices in a manufacturing system. One of the approaches is based on separately specified update rules, and one automatically uses the semantic web service descriptions formulated in OWL-S. While this paper specifically focuses on the factory automation domain, the approaches presented are applicable to other domains as well.

Knowledge-based web service integration for industrial automation

“…Then, the model of the production line presented in previous Fig. 2 is based on the one presented in [29] because, for instance, the domain is the same, there is a common terminology between models and class hierarchy can be reused.…”

“…In fact, [29] presents an OWL domain model that describes a generic production system ontology, adaptable to different use cases. Then, the model of the production line presented in previous Fig.…”

Comparing ontologies and databases: a critical review of lifecycle engineering models in manufacturing

“…Rule-based languages such as the Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) [26] can be employed within ontologies. These rules are defined on top of such ontological models, as presented in [27]. Through the use of rules and RDF triples, semantic reasoning engines can infer implicit knowledge and validate the consistency of a model [28,29].…”

On the Updating of Domain OWL Models at Runtime in Factory Automation Systems

“…Previous work (Puttonen, Lobov, & Martinez Lastra, 2013b) has proposed an alternative update rule structure, which requires that the service WSDL descriptions contain semantic annotations pointing to XSLT transformation scripts. However, such an approach would require difficult rules on applying the semantic annotations and compromise the complete independence of the Ontology Manager approach from the service descriptions.…”