Towards IEC 61499 Models of Computation in Ptolemy II

The prospects of cyber-physical systems (CPS) have been well disseminated and recognized in diverse industries. In industrial automation domain, continuous research on CPS technologies has been funded strategically and globally. One important research challenge in industrial CPS is the modelling of physical processes in continuous domains connected with control systems in discrete domains. Such co-modelling must leverage state-of-the-art standards and tools for practicality. One feasible combination is the IEC 61499 standard for event-driven control and the Ptolemy II platform for heterogeneous model composition. Furthermore, by implementing the computational models of IEC 61499 in Ptolemy II, the behavioural discrepancies of the same IEC 61499 application under different execution semantics can be analysed. As a foundation work towards these goals, this paper investigates the principles of modelling basic IEC 61499 elements using existing Ptolemy II structures. It is aimed to provide some initial insights for engineering industrial CPS based on IEC 61499 and Ptolemy II.