An Industry 4.0 Semantic Framework for the Inference of Generic Field Device Capabilities

Semantic interoperability is essential for the development of intelligent systems, the integration of heterogeneous devices, and the exchange of information independent of protocol. To this end, Industry 4.0 consortia have proposed interoperable information models to ensure the standardized interpretation of data for industrial systems. However, adapting existing standards to Industry 4.0 models remains a challenge for field devices due to the complexity of generically mapping domain-specific concepts and their interpretation. In this article, we propose a novel ontology-based framework to automate the interpretation of field device standards, providing a high-level interface to measure or control a process through generic capabilities. Through the use of the Industry 4.0 field device ontology, we generalize the interpretation of application data and device profiles to model the IO-Link and CANOpen standards. The proposed framework is evaluated using a plug-and-play tank demonstrator that leverages generic capabilities to identify commercial field devices and control an industrial process. Our results demonstrate that the generalization of field device semantics significantly reduces the manual effort of integrating different standards, in turn bridging the semantic gap between field devices and Industry 4.0 information models.