Bringing Clouds Down to Earth

Being able to efficiently deploy the Internet of Things (IoT) in industrial scenarios is crucial to realising the potential of Industry 4.0. The Eclipse Arrowhead framework brings a system of systems (SoS) approach to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).

The framework is designed around local clouds that can be organized geographically to support industrial production, for example as a local cloud containing resource-constrained devices and the systems and services necessary for a specific process in an industrial operation. A major challenge, however, is that such scenarios in the Industrial Internet of Things are complex and often involve a variety of data formats and protocols as well as different hardware and software platforms. Conceptual modeling currently relies on SysML, which provides a stable basis for representing and validating the well-formedness of a complex system but lacks an established way to support platform modeling and device involvement in heavily distributed IoT scenarios. An additional challenge is that as the complexity and size of systems increase, so do modeling expenses, if we are to attempt to accurately model the types of flexible, dynamic, SoS systems that the Eclipse Arrowhead framework is designed around. 

In Bringing Clouds Down to Earth, the authors propose a solution that takes concrete steps toward a primary goal of the Eclipse Arrowhead project, namely, to develop a holistic, comprehensive approach to the IIoT and bridge interoperability gaps. The article presents  the Eclipse Vorto project that includes VORTOLANG, a modeling language for IoT devices, modeling tools, plug-ins for code generation to enable flexible integration and a public repository of reusable device models. The article includes a realistic industrial scenario that integrates Eclipse Vorto device models with a service-oriented system modeling approach based on the SysML Arrowhead profile that is able to provide rich descriptions of Eclipse Arrowhead local clouds.

This work as well as the involved projects are hosted by the Eclipse Foundation which fosters open source innovation and collaboration to further development of software, programming and industry.  

Read the full article here.