Toward Plug&Play Cyber-Physical System Components

The automated interoperability of cyber-physical system components is a feature enabling the construction of more flexible and robust automation solutions. We describe the issues related to integration and propose a Plug&Play solution that allows plugging a self-describing device producing self-described data to a larger system. This solution utilizes OPC Unified Architecture (UA) and Semantic Web technologies to achieve integration at various levels. We illustrate and discuss this approach on our developed Semantic Big Data Historian and experimental cyber-physical system, which was proposed to resolve the hydroelectric power plant “stop-problem.”