The ARCOS (ARchitecture for COntrol and Supervision) Project is an ongoing academic effort aimed at the construction of a highly configurable and open software platform devoted to the development of industrial distributed supervision and control applications (D-S&C).

In the last years, many researches have been concerned with the adaptation of software engineering techniques for use in real-time industrial systems. Following this context, we have designed and implemented the ARCOS framework, devoted to the construction of reusable, flexible, and interoperable industrial systems.

The ARCOS project is based on the concepts of real-time components, vertical frameworks, and open standards. The research effort involves the definition of the basic framework, application management and assembly tools, demonstration applications, support for dependability (failure detection, group communication, and active replication), and support for static and dynamic adaptation, among other features.

The platform also includes a management tool to facilitate the specialization of ARCOS into a particular industrial scenario and a generic client for the real-time supervision and control of industrial plants.

The research is carried out in the Distributed System Laboratory (LaSiD) in the context of the Post-Graduation Program on Mechatronics at UFBA. The work force of the project counts on the work of several Master students of the Post-Graduation Program on Mechatronics, and a few research grants, from CAPES and Fapesb.

• ARCOS FEATURES Current ARCOS features: Component-based design by the use of the CCM (CORBA Component Model) component standard, providing a highly reusable and flexible platform for D-S&C systems; Event-based communication model by the use of CORBA's Event Service. Besides the use of a flexible model for computation, ARCOS relies on a flexible model for communication between components; Real-time behaviour by the use of TAO (The ACE ORB) and CIAO (Component-Integrated ACE ORB). With ARCOS, temporal constraints can be defined in both component servers and event server environments; Interoperability by the implementation of a CORBA standard for data acquisition: the DAIS (Data Acquisition from Industrial Systems) standard. The ARCOS implementation of DAIS enable the use of DAIS in several data acquisition scenarios, such as PLC (programmable-logic controllers), parallel port, etc. ARCOS can be fitted to new scenarios just by implemented specific, small-sized components; Supervisory applications for monitoring the D-S&C scenarios. ARCOS provided a generic DAIS browser (desktop and browser versions) and a specific supervision application for a chemical reactor supervision.

Future ARCOS features: Adaptation support by the use of DAnCE (Deployment And Configuration Engine), ReDaC (Redeployment and Reconfiguration) and a D-S&C meta-model provided by ARCOS; Dependability mechanisms by the design and implementation of a FT-CORBA-based framework for fault tolerance.

• WHO WE ARE

ARCOS is a project carried out in the Post-Graduation Program on Mechatronics (PPGM) on Federal University of Bahia (UFBa). PPGM is a master program runned by the Computer Science (DCC) and Mechanical Engineering (DEM) Departments of UFBa. The developers of ARCOS are members of the Distributed Systems Laboratory (LaSiD), a research center created in 1995 and that has performing researchs in the fields of Distributed Systems, Fault Tolerance, Real-Time, Mobile Agents, and Mechatronic Systems.

• Post-Graduation Program on Mechatronics (PPGM)
• Federal University of Bahia (UFBa)
• Department of Computer Science (DCC)
• Department of Mechanical Engineering (DEM)
• Distributed Systems Laboratory (LaSiD)