In the field of modern warehouse logistics, speed is crucial to success. This is where autonomous mobile robots (AMR) come in. In order to perform their tasks, they must respond as flexibly as possible to new environmental conditions and warehouse goods. ResilientSOA, the framework developed by Fraunhofer IKS, provides the necessary prerequisites. In this interview, project manager Florian Wörter explains exactly how it works.
November 4, 2021
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Hans-Thomas Hengl:
Florian, what exactly is ResilientSOA?
Florian Wörter:
ResilientSOA is a framework developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Cognitive Systems IKS in response to the challenging fact that safety-critical embedded systems need to keep providing more and more flexibility because they have the task of integrating systems from other providers. ResilientSOA is the solution to this problem: The framework makes both new and existing systems safe. This is achieved by means of software contracts which are checked during runtime.
Hans-Thomas Hengl:
How does ResilientSOA provide added value for companies?
Florian Wörter:
For the partners that Fraunhofer IKS is working with, one of the challenges they face is how to make systems more flexible; for example, when it comes to updating a system. ResilientSOA can help by modularizing monolithic system software and providing it with software contracts. These can be validated before, during and after the update in order to ensure that the updated component integrates safely into the system. As a result, it is no longer necessary to update the entire system — saving the company time and money.
But it is not just during updates that ResilientSOA plays a role; it is constantly carrying out adaptations during system operation in order to keep the customer system safe and operational, depending on the external context and system state. This reduces system errors considerably and boosts system efficiency.
© Fraunhofer IKS
Florian Wörter: "ResilientSOA can be integrated into existing systems without any problems."
Hans-Thomas Hengl:
What makes ResilientSOA special?
Florian Wörter:
ResilientSOA can be easily integrated into the system as a shared library. The research team took special care to ensure that the contracts are easy to create. We developed the relevant tools on the basis of the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF). Enhanced tooling to make it even easier to create the contracts can be implemented if necessary.
The aim of ResilientSOA is to make both new and existing systems adaptable and flexible. The framework can therefore be integrated into existing systems — for example, into an environment based on the robot operating system ROS 2 — without any problems. We will happily help companies whose systems perform complex industry- or application-specific tasks to develop and implement an appropriate overall concept.
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Hans-Thomas Hengl:
What does the future look like for ResilientSOA?
Florian Wörter:
Fraunhofer’s focus is on applied research. This means that ResilientSOA will be used as the starting point for scientific work, including work on advanced concepts for safe service orchestration. At the same time, ResilientSOA is also an important way of helping customers to understand our concepts of flexibility and resilience. We will therefore keep working on developing and improving the framework.
This project was funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of Economic Affairs, Regional Development and Energy as part of the project thematic support for the Development of the Institute for Cognitive Systems.
