In a collaborative approach to innovation, Systerel and their partners, the CEA List and Schneider-Electric, are once againuniting their resources and skill sets on a new project: Back-to-Back Testing B2BT.

B2BT offers means to optimize and master the design and deployment of distributed control architectures based on the IEC 61499 standard.

In all industry sectors, engineers are facing the challenges of increasing complexity and safety demands while facing increasing pressure to reduce cost and time to market.  

For the industry of the future, a key challenge is to move from a highly centralized approach to automation, to a more distributed approach where control functions are executed in field devices. This approach, where the automation logic uses the embedded computing resources of  smart instruments and actuators is called “Distributed Control”;

The engineering challenge associated with IEC 61499-based Distributed Control is to determine how best to distribute the control logic to the available computing resources while satisfying the overall requirements (performance, availability, communication bandwidth, etc.) specific to each installation.

To meet this challenge, B2BT uses software tools consisting of a digital twin combined with formal methods and automated testing in a two-phase approach. The first phase uses a digital twin to feed estimation tools that guide the designer to the best architecture compromise. The second phase, thanks to the B2BT technology, generates and automatically executes tests that validate the conformity of the actually deployed architecture to the original model.

With this two-phase approach, the design engineer is able to develop the best compromise between cost, performance, safety and time to market.

We would like to thank Systematic for their support in building this proposal, and BPI France and the Paris authorities for their financing of these activities.
We would also like to thank INERIS for their continued support and interest in the underlying technologies and their potential future uses.
This project was supported in a joint framework between the government and the regional authorities.
Within the framework of this project, Systerel has signed the regional charter of the values of the Republic and secularism.

Don’t hesitate to contact us to learn more about the Back-To-Back Testing technology and to receive a demonstration.