Two information models on the same project: Remote Handling use case for fusion facility|OPC UA Standard|Forum|OPC Foundation

Hello everyone!

I am studying the applicability of OPC UA into a scientific facility related to fusion energy. Just to put a bit of context, I am a PhD student focused on control systems with background on telecom. I have never worked with OPC UA on the field, but I am trying to get familiar and propose some reference designs and some top-level architecture to the project organization.

The facility requires remote handling intervention due to neutron and gamma radiation, so we have to manage several robotic and industrial devices such as robotic arms, cranes or AGVs from a central control room. To manage the information of all these heterogeneous devices I have thought about using the specification of spec from OPC Unified Architecture for Robotics (OPC 40010-1). 

Apart from that, the facility needs to manage and schedule the maintenance campaigns executed by the remote handling systems. Somehow we need to define the scheduling, the description of the maintenance operation in sequences, the devices required to perform the task and possible parallelization of tasks according to the availability of resources. The most suitable information model that I have found is the ISA-95 Common Object Model (OPC 10031-4).

Taking into account this short introduction, my questions are the following:

– Someone has some experience to share about using OPC UA for remote handling devices? This kind of devices are usually follows a man-in-the-loop approach, relying on the operator to take control of a master device instead of pure automation.

– Is it correct to use two different information models on the same project? Should they be separated into different address spaces?

– The models that I am considering are applicable to the system that I described?

Please forgive me if I said something incorrect, I am just a newbie! Any feedback will be welcome 🙂