Method and apparatus for the creation of personalized supervisory and control data acquisition systems for the management and integration of real-time enterprise-wide applications and systems

• US 6,477,434 B1
• Filed: 03/15/2000
• Issued: 11/05/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 01/15/1998
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Aruna Sanjaya Gunasiri, Bandu Wewalaarachchi, Haritharan Gunasingham, Priyantha Gunasekera
• Original Assignee: Aruna Sanjaya Gunasiri, Bandu Wewalaarachchi, Haritharan Gunasingham, Priyantha Gunasekera
• Inventors: Wewalaarachchi, Bandu, Gunasingham, Haritharan, Gunasekera, Priyantha, Gunasiri, Aruna Sanjaya
• Primary Examiner(s): Picard, Leo
• Assistant Examiner(s): BAHTA, KIDEST
• Application Number:
  US09/526,981
• Time in Patent Office: 965 Days
• Field of Search: 700/13, 700/3, 700/67, 700/17, 700/9, 707/103, 709/223, 709/224, 709/249, 709/202, 345/349, 345/249
• US Class Current: 700/83
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 19/418 Total factory control, i.e. centrally controlling a plurality of machines, e.g. direct or distributed numerical control [DNC], flexible manufacturing systems [FMS], integrated manufacturing systems [IMS] or computer integrated manufacturing [CIM]
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 2219/31118 Universal interface between asi and fieldbus, for any fielddevice
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 2219/31324 Distributed real time knowledge, database
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 2219/31394 Field management, low level, instruments and controllers acting in real time
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 2219/32404 Scada supervisory control and data acquisition
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 2219/32406 Distributed scada
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 2219/32407 Real time processing of data
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 2219/36137 Configuration of display device, operator panel
• CPC Class Codes: Y02P 90/02 Total factory control, e.g. smart factories, flexible manufacturing systems [FMS] or integrated manufacturing systems [IMS]

Abstract

A system and method provide for the creation and operation of real-time, enterprise-wide, personalized supervisory and control data acquisition systems Personalized SCADA applications are constructed from a virtual application service arid a personal agent framework using simple drag and drop operations or other high level actions. The virtual application service includes a communications gateway that communicates with disparate arid non-interoperable systems and external field devices to communicate low level real time data collected from such systems into the application environment, transforming the collected data in a single common data format. The virtual application service includes application cells that receive the reformatted data and process it to provide high level analysis and context, storing the processed data in an object server. The object server provides a unified, hierarchical object model for all of the data received from the underlying devices and systems. The virtual application service communicates with personal agent frameworks containing presentation cells arid service agents. The service agents arc representative of the virtual application service, and provide the personal agent framework with access to the object server to receive and send data from the object server to the Presentation cells. The presentation cells subscribe to the abject server'"'"'s data objects via the service agent. Presentation cells provide a graphical representation and mapping of data objects and hence underlying devices and systems, to allow a uses to manage and control such systems.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method for publishing supervisory and control data for managing distributed field devices that control or monitor physical or logical entities, the field devices having attributes representative of states of the entities, the method comprising:

receiving from the distributed field devices real time data formatted according to a communications protocol associated with each field device, such that real time data received from at least two field devices has different data formats;

converting the received real time data to standardized real time data in a standard data format independent of the field devices that specifies for each item of real time data a content and source of the real time data;

processing the standardized real time data to produce derived real time data;

storing in a central host computer the derived real time data in individual data objects in an object server, each data object having attributes corresponding to attributes of a field device; and

publishing the derived real time data for the attributes of at least one data object to allow software processes executing on computers remote from the host computer to access the derived real time data.

2. The computer implemented method of claim l, further comprising:

subscribing to the real-time data for the attributes of at least one data object;

receiving the real time data;

representing the real time data on at least one presentation cell;

responsive to a change in the published derived real time data, dynamically updating a representation of the change in the attributes of the field device by mapping the derived real time data to an output representation on at least one presentation cell.

3. A computer implemented supervisory control and data acquisition system for managing distributed field devices that control or monitor physical or logical entities, the field devices having attributes representative of states of the entities, the system comprising:

at least one virtual application service including;

a communications gateway communicatively coupled to selected ones of the field devices to receive real time data from the field devices, the real time data formatted according to a communications protocol associated with the field devices, the communications gateway converting the received real time data to standardized real time data in a standard data format independent of the field devices that specifies for each item of real time data a content and source of the real time data;

a plurality of application cells, each application cell coupled to the communications gateway to receive the standardized real time data for at least one of the field devices and apply an inferencing operation thereto to produce derived real time data;

an object server communicatively coupled to the plurality of application cells to receive the derived real time data and to store the derived real time data in a plurality of data objects, each data object having attributes corresponding to attributes of a field device; and

a personal agent framework including;

at least one personal agent, each personal agent receiving the derived real time data from the object server, each personal agent including at least one presentation cell, each presentation cell providing a representation of at least one attribute of a field device that is dynamically responsive to real time changes in the attribute, each presentation cell receiving the derived real time data for the attribute, and mapping the derived real time data to an output representation.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein

the virtual application service is executed on a host computer system; and

the personal agent framework is executed on at least one client device.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the personal agent framework further comprises:

at least one service agent representing an instance of virtual application services, each service agent communicatively coupled to the object server of the virtual application service to receive derived real time data of a data object in response to the data object being updated by an application cell.

6. The system of claim 3, wherein the at least one personal agent can be customized by a user by selecting a type of presentation cell to be included in the at least one personal agent.

7. In a supervisory control and data acquisition system for managing distributed field devices that control or monitor physical or logical entities, the field devices having attributes representative of states of the entities, the system comprising at least one personal agent that receives real time data corresponding to the attributes and maps the real time data to an output representation, a computer-implemented method for customizing the at least one personal agent, the method comprising:

associating the personal agent with a service agent, wherein

the service agent is communicatively coupled to an object server to receive the real time data of one of a plurality of data objects in response to the data object being updated; and

the object server is configured to receive the real time data from the field devices and to store the real time data in the plurality of data objects, each data object having attributes corresponding to attributes of a field device;

creating at least one presentation cell to provide a representation of at least one attribute of a field device that is dynamically responsive to real time changes in the attribute, the at least one presentation cell receiving the real time data for the attribute, and to map the real time data to an output representation; and

associating the at least one presentation cell with a data object in the service agent.

8. The method of claim 7 further comprising:

configuring properties of the service agent by receiving a user input specifying at least one of the following;

a name of the service agent;

a name of the object server which is communicatively coupled with the service agent;

a type of data contained in the object server;

a length of each data object in the object server; and

an address of a host computer on which the object server is located.

9. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

configuring properties of the at least one presentation cell by receiving a user input specifying at least one of the following;

a display attribute of the at least one presentation cell;

an editing attribute of the at least one presentation cell;

a name of the at least one presentation cell;

the attribute of a field device that the at least one presentation cell represents; and

a range of values for which the at least one presentation cell maps inputs to outputs.

10. A computer program product stored in a computer readable medium for controlling a computer to perform a method for publishing supervisory and control data for managing distributed field devices that control or monitor physical or logical entities, the field devices having attributes representative of states of the entities, the method comprising:

receiving from the distributed field devices real time data formatted according to a communications protocol associated with each field device, such that real time data received from at least two field devices has different data formats;

converting the received real time data to standardized real time data in a standard data format independent of the field devices that specifies for each item of real time data a content and source of the real time data;

processing the standardized real time data to produce derived real time data;

storing in a central host computer the derived real time data in individual data objects in an object server, each data object having attributes corresponding to attributes of a field device; and

publishing the derived real time data for the attributes of each data object to allow software processes executing on computers remote from the host computer to access the derived real time data.

11. A computer implemented method for providing supervisory and control data for managing distributed field devices that control or monitor physical or logical entities, the field devices having attributes representative of states of the entities, the method comprising:

on a host system;

receiving from the distributed field devices real time data formatted according to a communications protocol associated with each field device, such that real time data received from at least two field devices has different data formats;

converting the received real time data to standardized real time data in a standard data format independent of the field devices that specifies for each item of real time data a content and source of the real time data;

processing the standardized real time data to produce derived real time data;

storing in a central host computer the derived real time data in individual data objects in an object server, each data object having attributes corresponding to attributes of a field device;

publishing the derived real time data for the attributes of each data object to allow software processes executing on computers remote from the host computer to access the derived real time data;

on a client device;

subscribing to the derived real time data for the attributes of each data object;

receiving the derived real time data;

representing the derived real time data on presentation cells; and

responsive to a change in the published derived real time data, dynamically updating a representation of the change in the attributes of the field device by mapping the derived real time data to an output representation on a presentation cell.

12. A computer implemented method for providing supervisory and control data for, managing distributed field devices that control or monitor physical or logical entities, the field devices having attributes representative of states of the entities, the method comprising:

on a first host system;

receiving from the distributed field devices real time data formatted according to a communications protocol associated with each field device, such that real time data received from at least two field devices has different data formats;

converting the received real time data to standardized real time data in a standard data format independent of the field devices that specifies for each item of real time data a content and source of the real time data;

processing the standardized real time data to produce derived real time data;

storing in a central host computer the derived real time data in individual data objects in an object server, each data object having attributes corresponding to attributes of a field device;

publishing the derived real time data for the attributes of each data object to allow software processes executing on computers remote from the first host computer to access the derived real time data;

on a second host system;

subscribing to first host system to obtain the derived real time data for the attributes of at least one of the data objects;

receiving from the first host system the derived real time data of a subscribed data object;

publishing the derived real time data for the attributes of the subscribed data object to allow software processes executing on computers remote from the second host computer to access the derived real time data;

on a client device;

subscribing to the second host system to obtain derived real time data for the attributes of at least one of the data objects;

receiving from the second host system the derived real time data;

representing the derived real time data on at least one presentation cell on the client device; and

responsive to a change in the published derived real time data, dynamically updating a representation of the change in the attributes of the field device by mapping the derived real time data to an output representation on a presentation cell.