Platform

<table style="border:0px;"> <tr style="border:0px;"> <td style="border:0px;"><img src="platform/oktoflow.png" alt="oktoflow" width="150"/></td> <td style="border:0px;"><h1>oktoflow/IIP-Ecosphere AI-enabled Industry 4.0/IIoT platform </h1></td> <td style="border:0px;"><img src="platform/logo.png" alt="IIP-Ecosphere" width="150"/></td> </tr> </table>

The oktoflow Industry 4.0/IIoT platform aims at demonstrating new approaches to vendor-independent, interoperable and open platform concepts for easy-to-use AI. In particular, it aims at uniform, distributed deployment of services to heterogeneous (edge) devices, an AI toolkit for the industrial production, consistent configuration support ranging from network to applications as well as the use and application of established and upcoming IIoT standards, e.g., asset administration shells (to be used for all platform interfaces).

For installation and first steps, see install guide.

News

• Release of octoflow version 0.8 planned for mid of April/March, 2026. Release-preparation started.
• Management UI supports oktoflow app modeling and realization , from empty model to integrated app. ReGaP-Video will follow soon.
• ReGaP: Influx/Grafana based dashboarding for oktoflow apps via oktoflow2grafana is working.
• Updated (more agile) documentation of configuration concepts as well as completely revised platform handbook
• INFLUX DB v3 connector for ReGaP.
• Upcoming support for Asset Administration Shells metamodel v3 through BaSyx2
• Support for Python 3.13 and virtual environments

Public demonstrations

• Public demonstration on EMO 2023 with magnetic identification by MIP technology, drive condition monitoring by Lenze and AI-based visual quality inspection.
• Public demonstrations on 2023/06/29 in Hildesheim at the "day of computer science" as well as at Nürnberg Digital "The future of intelligent Manufacturing" on 2023/07/07.
• Presentation of a federated learning case with two cobots on HM'23 in collaboration with Phoenix Contact, Bitmotec/OnLogic, UR including platform-integrated federated learning based on Flower.
• Presentation of improved robot-based platform demonstrator at TddT'22, Berlin
• Presentation of robot-based visual quality inspection app on HM'22 (with 3 sources, Python-based AI, AAS-based Angular application).

The demonstrations and further experiments confirmed compatibility with Phoenix Contact PLCnext (OPC UA, EEM integration), Beckhoff IPC (OPC UA), VDW UMATI (OPC UA), Bitmotec (MQTT), Lenze (MQTT), MIP (MQTT), Beckhoff ADS (Windows), Phoenix Contact EEM-MA 370 (Modbus/TCP), Siemens SENTRON PAC 3200 (Modbus/TCP) ...

Overview

For detailed links to the individual components, please refer to the platform overview. The platform repository also contains a growing set of examples and demonstration use cases.

For more details on how to develop application-specific services for the IIP-Ecosphere platform, please watch our series of video tutorials on YouTube or IIP-Ecosphere.

Documentation

Platform installation, use and concepts are documented in several documents:

• The platform installation guide.
• The platform FAQ.
• The platform handbook and on Zenodo
• The platform releases overview
• Service development tutorial YouTube and IIP-Ecosphere.
• The IIP-Ecosphere platform requirements (functional and quality view)
• The IIP-Ecosphere platform usage view
• The IIP-Ecosphere Industry 4.0 platform overview
• For more information, see the documentation overview

Publications

• Holger Eichelberger, Christian Sauer, Amir Shayan Ahmadian, Christian Kröher, Industry 4.0/IIoT Platforms for manufacturing systems - A systematic review contrasting the scientific and the industrial side, Journal of Information and Software Technology, 107650, 2024, DOI
• Christian Nikolajew, Holger Eichelberger, Industry 4.0 Connectors - A Performance Experiment with Modbus/TCP, Symposium on Software Performance (SSP'24), to appear, arxiv
• Alexander Weber, Jobst Hildebrand, Holger Eichelberger, ADS Performance Revisited, Symposium on Software Performance (SSP'24), to appear, arxiv
• Ahmad Alamoush, Holger Eichelberger, Open source container orchestration for Industry 4.0 - requirements and systematic feature analysis, International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer, 26 (4) DOI
• Holger Eichelberger, Alexander Weber, Model-Driven Realization of IDTA Submodel Specifications: The Good, the Bad, the Incompatible?, IEEE 28th International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA'24), pp. 1-8, DOI
• Leonhard Faubel, Thomas Woudsma, Benjamin Kloepper, Holger Eichelberger, Fabian Buelow, Klaus Schmid, MLOps for Cyber-Physical Production Systems: Challenges and Solutions, IEEE Software, DOI, arxiv
• Alexander Weber, Holger Eichelberger, Per Schreiber and Svenja Wienrich, Performance comparison of TwinCat ADS for Python and Java, Symposium on Software Performance (SSP'23), 2023
• Ahmad Alamoush and Holger Eichelberger, Analyzing and Improving the Performance of Continuous Container Creation and Deployment, Symposium on Software Performance (SSP'23), 2023
• Holger Eichelberger and Claudia Niederée, Asset Administration Shells, Configuration, Code Generation: A power trio for Industry 4.0 Platforms, IEEE 28th International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA'23), pp. 1-8, DOI.
• Christian Sauer and Holger Eichelberger: Experiences in Collecting Requirements for an AI-enabled Industry 4.0 Platform, GI Fachgruppe Requirements Engineering, Softwaretechnik-Trends, 43(4), 2023 GI
• Kevin Feichtinger, Kristof Meixner, Felix Rinker, Istvan Koren, Holger Eichelberger, Tonja Heinemann, Jörg Holtmann, Marco Konersmann, Judith Michael, Eva-Maria Neumann, Jerome Pfeiffer, Rick Rabiser, Matthias Riebisch and Klaus Schmid (2023): Software in Cyberphysischen Produktionssystemen - Herausforderungen zur Umsetzung in der Industrie In: ATP-Magazin, 2023 (4): 62-68.
• Holger Eichelberger, Gregory Palmer, Svenja Reimer, Tat Trong Vu, Hieu Do, Sofiane Laridi, Alexander Weber, Claudia Niederee, Thomas Hildebrandt in Thais Batista, Toms Bures, Claudia Raibulet and Henry Muccini (Hrsg.) (2023): Developing an AI-Enabled IIoT Platform - Lessons Learned from Early Use Case Validation In: Software Architecture. ECSA 2022 Tracks and Workshops Bd. 13928. S. 265-283. Springer International Publishing.
• Holger Eichelberger, Gregory Palmer and Claudia Niederee (2023): Developing an AI-enabled Industry 4.0 platform - Performance experiences on deploying AI onto an industrial edge device In: Softwaretechnik-Trends, 43 (1): 35-37.
• Christian Sauer and Holger Eichelberger (2023): Performance Evaluation of BaSyx based Asset Administration Shells for Industry 4.0 Applications In: Softwaretechnik-Trends, 43 (1): 47-49.
• Ahmad Alamoush and Holger Eichelberger (2023): Adapting Kubernetes to IIoT and Industry 4.0 protocols - An initial performance analysis In: Softwaretechnik-Trends, 43 (1): 41-43.
• Holger Eichelberger, Svenja Reimer, Claudia Niederee and Gregory Palmer (2022): Virtuelle IIoT-Plattform für die Digitalisierung der Fertigung In: Zeitschrift für wirtschaftlichen Fabrikbetrieb, 117 (12): 884-887.
• Kevin Feichtinger, Kristof Meixner, Felix Rinker, Istvan Koren, Holger Eichelberger, Tonja Heinemann, Jörg Holtmann, Marco Konersmann, Judith Michael, Eva-Maria Neumann, Jerome Pfeiffer, Rick Rabiser, Matthias Riebisch and Klaus Schmid (2022): Industry Voices on Software Engineering Challenges in Cyber-Physical Production Systems Engineering In: 2022 27th IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory