Remote industrial monitoring using a cloud infrastructure

• US 9,800,667 B2
• Filed: 09/27/2016
• Issued: 10/24/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 08/09/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Rockwell Automation Technologies Incorporated (Rockwell Automation, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Rockwell Automation Technologies Incorporated (Rockwell Automation, Inc.)
• Inventors: Maturana, Francisco, Asenjo, Juan L.
• Primary Examiner(s): KATSIKIS, KOSTAS J
• Application Number:
  US15/277,010
• Publication Number:
  US 20170019483A1
• Time in Patent Office: 392 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 2219/13 Plc programming
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 2223/06 Remote monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 23/0216 Human interface functionality, e.g. monitoring system providing help to the user in the selection of tests or in its configuration
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 23/0221 Preprocessing measurements, e.g. data collection rate adjustment; Standardization of measurements; Time series or signal analysis, e.g. frequency analysis or wavelets; Trustworthiness of measurements; Indexes therefor; Measurements using easily measured parameters to estimate parameters difficult to measure; Virtual sensor creation; De-noising; Sensor fusion; Unconventional preprocessing inherently present in specific fault detection methods like PCA-based methods
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 23/0264 Control of logging system, e.g. decision on which data to store; time-stamping measurements
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/04 Inference or reasoning models
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 7/01 Probabilistic graphical models, e.g. probabilistic networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/10 in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/125 involving control of end-device applications over a network
• CPC Class Codes: Y02P 90/80 Management or planning

Abstract

A cloud-based infrastructure facilitates gathering, transmitting, and remote storage of control and automation data using an agent-based communication channel. The infrastructure collects the industrial data from an industrial enterprise and intelligently sorts and organizes the acquired data based on selected criteria. Message queues can be configured on the cloud platform to segregate the industrial data according to priority, data type, or other criteria. Behavior assemblies stored in customer-specific manifests on the cloud platform define customer-specific preferences for processing data stored in the respective message queues. Web-based tools can deliver automated notifications to an end user device based on analysis of the stored data, and allow the user to remotely view the stored data.

Claims

1. A method for providing industrial data to a cloud-based remote monitoring application, comprising:

collecting, by a system comprising at least one processor, industrial data from one or more industrial devices;

storing, by the system, the industrial data in compressed files;

packaging, by the system, the compressed files into respective data packets;

assigning, by the system, the compressed files to selected message queues, of a set of message queues defined on a cloud platform, based on classifications of the respective data packets as one of time-series record data, real-time monitored data, or alarm data, wherein the data packets comprise headers that identify the selected message queues, and wherein the set of message queues comprise at least a historical data queue for processing of the time-series record data, a live data queue for processing of the real-time monitored data, and an alarms queue for processing of the alarm data, the alarms queue having a highest processing priority of the set of message queues; and

sending, by the system, the data packets to the cloud platform.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining, by the system, the selected message queues based on a configuration file that defines associations between the message queues and at least one of a data type of the industrial data or a priority associated with the industrial data.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising receiving, by the system, input that assigns the priority to respective data tags that contain the industrial data.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising uploading, by the system, behavior assembly data to the cloud platform, wherein the behavior assembly data defines at least one of processing preferences or storage preferences associated with the set of message queues.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the packaging comprises defining the headers to include fields for identifying one of the set of message queues and at least one of a customer identifier, a site identifier a virtual support engineer identifier, a data priority, a message type, or a process identifier.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising at least one of filtering the industrial data, re-formatting the industrial data, combining subsets of the industrial data, summarizing the industrial data, or compressing the industrial data prior to sending the industrial data to the cloud platform.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising appending contextual metadata to the industrial data prior to sending the industrial data to the cloud platform.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the appending comprises appending at least one of a time indicator identifying a time at which the industrial data was generated, a quality indicator, a production area indicator identifying a production area from which the industrial data was collected, a machine or process state indicator identifying a state of a machine or process at the time at which the industrial data was generated, or a personnel identifying an employee on duty at the time at which the industrial data was generated.

9. A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon executable instructions that, in response to execution, cause a system comprising a process to perform operations, the operations comprising:

collecting industrial data from one or more industrial devices;

storing the industrial data in compressed files;

packaging the compressed files into respective data packets, the data packets comprising headers that indicate selected message queues of a set of message queues defined on a cloud platform, wherein the set of message queues comprise at least a historical data queue for processing of the time-series record data, a live data queue for processing of the real-time monitored data, and an alarms queue for processing of the alarm data, the alarms queue having a highest processing priority of the set of message queues;

assigning the compressed files to the selected message queues based on classifications of the respective data packets as one of time-series record data, real-time monitored data, or alarm data; and

sending the data packets to the cloud platform.

10. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 9, the operations further comprising determining the selected message queues based on a configuration file that defines associations between the message queues and at least one of a data type of the industrial data or a priority associated with the industrial data.

11. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 10, the operations further comprising receiving input data that assigns the priority to respective data tags that contain the industrial data.

12. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 9, the operations further comprising uploading behavior assembly data to the cloud platform, wherein the behavior assembly data defines at least one of processing preferences or storage preferences associated with the set of message queues.

13. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the packaging comprises defining the headers to include fields for identifying one of the set of message queues and at least one of a customer identifier, a site identifier a virtual support engineer identifier, a data priority, a message type, or a process identifier.

14. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 9, the operations further comprising at least one of filtering the industrial data, re-formatting the industrial data, combining subsets of the industrial data, summarizing the industrial data, or compressing the industrial data prior to sending the industrial data to the cloud platform.

15. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 9, the operations further comprising appending contextual metadata to the industrial data prior to sending the industrial data to the cloud platform.

16. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15, wherein the contextual metadata comprises at least one of a time indicator identifying a time at which the industrial data was generated, a quality indicator, a production area indicator identifying a production area from which the industrial data was collected, a machine or process state indicator identifying a state of a machine or process at the time at which the industrial data was generated, or a personnel identifying an employee on duty at the time at which the industrial data was generated.

17. A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon executable instructions that, in response to execution, cause a system comprising a process to perform operations, the operations comprising:

creating a set of message queues on a cloud platform, wherein the set of message queues comprise at least a historical data queue for processing of time-series record data, a live data queue for processing of real-time monitored data, and an alarms queue for processing of alarm data;

associating the set of message queues with respective processing priorities, wherein associating comprises assigning a highest processing priority to the alarm queue;

receiving, at the cloud platform, data packets from a cloud agent device, wherein the data packets respectively comprise industrial data and a header for the industrial data;

classifying the data packets, based on the header, according to time-series record data, real-time monitored data, and alarm data; and

assigning the industrial data associated with the respective data packets to selected message queues of the set of message queues in accordance with the classifying.

18. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 17, the operations further comprising processing the data packets on the cloud platform based on behavior assembly data associated with the respective message queues.

19. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 18, the operations further comprising storing at least a subset of the industrial data in a first cloud storage partition selected based on the behavior assembly data.

20. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 17, the operations further comprising:

receiving, at the cloud platform, second behavior assembly data from the cloud agent device that defines a processing preference for a data type;

creating, on the cloud platform, a new message queue corresponding to the second behavior assembly data in response to the receiving the second behavior assembly data; and

storing the second behavior assembly data in a manifest that maintains mapping definitions that define respective mappings between behavior assembly data and data types.