Arrowhead is addressing efficiency and flexibility at the global scale by means of collaborative automation for five application verticals. That means production (manufacturing, process, energy), smart buildings and infrastructures, electro-mobility and virtual market of energy.
Vision and grand challenges
Our vision is to enable collaborative automation by networked embedded devices. The grand challenges are enabling the interoperability and integrability of services provided by almost any device.
We assume that a service-based approach will be the feasible technology that enables collaborative automation in an open-network environment connecting many embedded devices.
The success of Arrowhead technology depends not only on the technology but also on the capability to create and pursue innovations supported by the core of our technology. If successful the approach is expected to strongly contribute to very significant reduction, 75 % or more, in the design and engineering efforts for the predicted multi-billion networked devices.
Our society is facing both energy and competitiveness challenges. These challenges are tightly linked and require new dynamic interactions between energy producers and energy consumers, between machines, between systems, between people and systems, etc. Cooperative automation is the key for these dynamic interactions and is enabled by the technology developed around the Internet of Things and Service Oriented Architectures.
The objective of the Arrowhead project is to address the technical and applicative challenges associated to cooperative automation:
- Provide a technical framework adapted in terms of functions and performances
- Propose solutions for integration with legacy systems
- Implement and evaluate the cooperative automation through real experimentations in applicative domains: electro-mobility, smart buildings, infrastructures and smart cities, industrial production, energy production and energy virtual market
- Point out the accessible innovations thanks to new services
- Lead the way to further standardization work
The strategy adopted in the project has four major dimensions:
- An innovation strategy based on business and technology gap analysis paired with a market implementation strategy based on end users priorities and long term technology strategies
- Application pilots where technology demonstrations in real working environments will be made
- A technology framework enabling collaborative automation and closing innovation critical technology gaps
- An innovation coordination methodology for complex innovation “orchestration”
The Arrowhead project started March 1st 2013 and has a duration of four years.
Project planning
For each application demonstration the methodology visualized in the figure below has been adopted. The methodology heart is the pilot application business case and the associated frame work and innovation critical technology gap analysis. To support short to midterm exploitation it has been decide to adopt a generation approach to the pilot demonstrations. Each pilot demonstration will have 3 generations, thus creating 3 distinct phases for the project conduction.
The working process of pilots. Creation of first generation of a demo. Which creates the first prototype possible to take to the market and the technology requirements for next step. These requirements are use in the parallel technology R&D and subsequently feed to the pilot for the creation of the next generation of demonstrations.
Based on business case analysis a number of evolutionary demonstrations are defined for each pilot. The associated framework analysis forms a core part of Arrowhead technology enabling collaborative automation. Finally closing the identified innovation critical technologies gaps is essential to generate the market and expected society impact.
The project contains 5 pilot domains for which a number of demonstrations will be made. The work plan addresses this by the planning of 3 generations of pilot demonstrations. The global work plan given in the figure above. The work plan spans 48 months. All major technology and demonstrations work will be finished by month 45. Leaving the last 3 month for project closing.
The global work plan also indicates the flow of results between the pilot work packages and the technology work packages. An important feature here is the linkage of concentrated dissemination effort to the end of each pilot demonstration generation. This to build up a high profile visibility of the project and its results.
The work plan is transferred to 5 pilot WP:s (WP1-5) one for each pilot domain. Each pilot will perform several domain specific demonstrations. These demonstrations will also include the interaction with other demonstrations. The pilot WP:s will produce 3 generations of demonstration. The pilot WP:s are accompanied by 4 technology WP:s (WP6-9) designed to capture general and domain application requirements to the common service framework, WP6. These requirements paired with basic technology interoperability and integrability analysis forming the basics for the common framework design is performed in WP7.
The necessary components of the common Arrowhead service framework will be designed, and implementation in WP8. For the market innovation a few innovation critical technology gaps has been identified. These will be researched, solutions proposed, designed and implemented in WP8 as well. Interoperability and integrability is also addressed in WP8. While service repository and means of testing interoperability of services and devices providing service will be devised in WP9. The results of the technology WP:s will be introduced to the pilot WP in three generations synchronized with the pilot demonstrations.
The implementation of the Innovation strategy is made through WP10 handling issues of business models and business, technology and requirement trend screening, paired with work on the future governance of the Arrowhead common service framework and possible standardisation thereof. Creating of technology and market momentum is pushed by Arrowhead by concentrated dissemination activities connected to the pilot demonstrations through the work in WP11. Finally WP12 is devoted to project management.
Overall project status
The Arrowhead Framework for the first generation of demonstrators was delivered in Milestone 2 in January 2014 and made available for use of the Pilots. The main parts are:
- Design documentation guidelines and templates, a generic system of system design pattern and a “Cookbook” showing how to use the cores services and systems.
- Core services and systems (documentation and prototypes) enabling the service exchange between application systems.
- A test tool usable for the Pilots to test conformity to the Arrowhead Framework
The Arrowhead Framework, and the use of it, will be demonstrated in Stavanger in June.
At the third Milestone after sixteen months the preparation of the first generation demonstrations were made.
The Arrowhead Framework, and the use of it, and the first generation Pilot demonstrations were presented in Stavanger in June 10-12. Read more here: Arrowhead Generation 1 Demonstration – Stavanger.
The forth Milestone after twenty-three months targeted the specification for the second generation of Pilot specifications and the Arrowhead Framework for second generation demonstrators.
Some partners have taken results of the Arrowhead projects to the market. Other partner have concrete plans to do that during 2016.
The second generation demonstrations are planned for the “Embedded Conference Scandinavia 2015” in November 3-4, in Stockholm.