DDS™ - The Proven Data Connectivity Standard for IoT™ Nov. 2016 | Page 17

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.
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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CASE STUDIES

Ulstein Builds Distributed
Monitoring and Control
with DDS