Ulstein Builds Distributed Monitoring and Control with DDS
CHALLENGE
Ulstein has developed control systems for the maritime sector for decades , and are continuously seeking to improve their solutions and products to solve the demanding challenges their customers face . Their search for an improved control system platform led them towards the Data-Distribution Service . Find how their use of DDS simplifies both system architecture , development and testability .
CASE STUDIES
The technical challenges Ulstein met while implementing existing middleware on a large-scale automation system forced them to think in a new direction . With about 100 integrated automation systems for ships delivered the last decade , all based on SCADA / PLC platform , Ulstein needed to change and open up their architecture . All issues regarding old versions , compatibility issues , dying support of various software platforms required a new solution . In addition Ulstein saw that the number of signals or I / Os were increasing rapidly , causing engineers to spend too much time in tuning and making SCADA platform work with all details and the risk / time in critical parts of projects during commissioning were not acceptable . The question was on how the company could reduce complexity of large-scale control systems . The Ulstein engineers were looking for a solution that would be based on open standards and open software , vendor-neutral and not bundled with hardware .
SOLUTION
Quite early in the development project one of Ulstein engineers looked at middleware options for large and safety-critical systems and discovered the DDS standard . In the beginning , Ulsten kept the middleware — they had for a while , and only implemented DDS as a replacement of their JASON implementation for controller – GUI communication . Then the company implemented DDS as the central backbone for communication between GUIs , controllers and IO Controllers with a range of fieldbus connections .
BENEFITS
Now Ulsten engineers spend less time in development and testing , as DDS tackles large numbers of signals , components and physical devices and it is proven technology with reliable support . This also enabled the company to implement a simple , vendor-neutral architecture with low-cost hardware for a large safety-critical control system . Having a standardized software solution with DDS implementation also saved Ultsen time and costs for developing their new integrated automation platform on top of the same DDS architecture . The adoption of DDS opened up an endless range of opportunities for what Ulsten can build on this platform .
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