OPC UA Information Model and a Wrapper for IEC 61499 Runtimes OPC UA is considered as an important communication technology for Industry 4.0 components. On the other hand, IEC 61499 is one of the technologies available for developing applications to the same components. In this paper, a proposal for an OPC UA information model for IEC 61499 systems is developed in order to enhance communication with IEC 61499 applications through OPC UA. Already existing related information models, particularly OPC UA for Devices and IEC 611313, are utilized as models and parts of the design. An OPC UA wrapper for IEC 61499 runtimes is presented as one possible way to implement the information model. Both the information model and the wrapper are then tested through a case study.

Towards IEC 61499 Based Distributed Intelligent Automation: Design and Computing Perspectives The IEC 61499 standard has been proposed for development of nextgeneration industrial automation systems to support portability, interoperability, and configurability. Compared with the traditional IEC 611313 standard, it provides an open reference architecture with some key features: objectoriented modeling by using function blocks as basic elements, and eventdriven execution by using dataevents as inputoutput. Recently IEC 61499 has been integrated with its enabling technologies to realize distributed intelligent automation for industrial cyberphysical systems. In this paper, two perspectives are provided through analysis of recent research: a) design paradigms for IEC 61499, including objectoriented design, componentbased design, and serviceoriented architecture; and b) computing paradigms for IEC 61499, including distributed intelligence, autonomic computing, and cloud computing. Future research trends are also outlined as a conclusion.