OntoPLC: Semantic Model of PLC Programs for Code Exchange and Software Reuse

Regarding programmable logic controller (PLC) development, improving programming efficiency and encouraging code exchange and software reuse are necessary to increase the productivity and safety of smart manufacturing and industrial automation. However, differences between implementations are significant even though all manufacturers claim to conform to the IEC 61131-3 and IEC 61131-10 standards, resulting in incompatibilities inside heterogeneous systems, preventing projects from interoperating between vendors. In this article, we present an approach that utilizes an ontology-based semantic model named OntoPLC to enable automatic porting of PLC projects between development environments and also prevent significant information loss during the translation process. High-level semantics of PLC projects are added into OntoPLC including software resources, which can be required for software reuse leveraging semantic query. To demonstrate the usefulness of the ontology model, the proposed methodology is applied to a turbine-driven boiler feed pump control module.