The Programmable-logical-controller (PLC) has been the key building block of industrial control systems throughout the whole automation revolution, where its role has been mainly to command low-level regulatory feedback control loops. Despite the great recent advances in automation technologies, driven by the paradigm of the Industry 4.0 and its hyper-connected ecosystem, the PLC has not seen yet a modernized version targeting the functionalities an Industry 4.0-oriented control system requires. In this work, a device named IoT-PLC is designed and prototyped, in an effort to generate a PLC tailored for the Industry 4.0 revolution. The proposed IoT-PLC operates as a containerized piece of equipment, with each functionality packaged within a separate container. The IoT-PLC has regulatory control capabilities, fog-computing functionalities as filtering and field data storage, and multiple wireless interfaces managed independently. Moreover, it uses a virtual device model that works as an abstraction method to represent real entities, so that IoT-PLC applications can interact transparently and with straightforward compatibility with upper cloud layers. Live migration functionalities add flexibility by allowing a loop reconfiguration without restarting the controller. Laboratory experiments illustrate the effectiveness and potential of the proposed device.

在整个自动化革命中，可编程逻辑控制器 (PLC) 一直是工业控制系统的关键构建块，其作用主要是命令低级调节反馈控制回路。尽管在工业 4.0 范式及其超连接生态系统的推动下，自动化技术最近取得了巨大进步，但 PLC 还没有出现针对面向工业 4.0 的控制系统所需功能的现代化版本。在这项工作中，一个名为 IoT-PLC 的设备被设计和原型化，以努力生成一个为工业 4.0 革命量身定制的 PLC。提议的 IoT-PLC 作为一个容器化设备运行，每个功能都打包在一个单独的容器中。IoT-PLC 具有监管控制能力，雾计算功能作为过滤和现场数据存储，以及独立管理的多个无线接口。此外，它使用虚拟设备模型作为抽象方法来表示真实实体，以便 IoT-PLC 应用程序可以透明地交互并与上层云层直接兼容。实时迁移功能通过允许循环重新配置而无需重新启动控制器来增加灵活性。实验室实验说明了所提议设备的有效性和潜力。以便 IoT-PLC 应用程序可以透明地交互并与上层云层直接兼容。实时迁移功能通过允许循环重新配置而无需重新启动控制器来增加灵活性。实验室实验说明了所提议设备的有效性和潜力。以便 IoT-PLC 应用程序可以透明地交互并与上层云层直接兼容。实时迁移功能通过允许循环重新配置而无需重新启动控制器来增加灵活性。实验室实验说明了所提议设备的有效性和潜力。