Towards Interoperability of Industrial Automation Systems Using SystemJ and TwinCAT

This paper proposes extending the system-level programming language SystemJ to interact with the industry control software TwinCAT to introduce dynamic behaviors into TwinCAT-based systems. The approach extends abstract SystemJ signal classes using the Automation Device Specification (ADS) protocol to access TwinCAT status and control variables, allowing new high-level concepts like dynamic reconfigurability of industrial automation systems to control systems originally designed using traditional languages and tools. We created prototypes of realistic manufacturing systems testbeds and conducted experiments to validate the proposed approach by accessing different types of TwinCAT variables.