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Towards Integration of Legacy and Modular Automation Systems with Containerization

Authors:

Muhammad Waqas, Per Erik Strandberg, Johan Furunäs-Åkesson, Saad Mubeen, Mohammad Ashjaei

Research group:

Heterogeneous systems - hardware software co-design

Publication Type:

Conference/Workshop Paper

Venue:

ETFA'25 IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation

Abstract

To meet the increasing demands of high-throughput manufacturing, modern automation systems are increasingly being designed using a modular architecture, commonly referred to as modular automation. However, due to vendor lock-ins and high upfront investment requirements, the industry relies on existing legacy automation systems that were developed in a non-modular fashion. A major challenge lies in enabling the incremental modernization of legacy systems while ensuring their seamless coexistence with modular automation systems. To address this challenge, we propose a conceptual architecture for a containerized gateway that integrates legacy and modular automation systems. We present initial insights into the feasibility of using containers for such integration via a survey conducted with researchers and practitioners in the automation domain. Furthermore, we discuss an implementation plan for the proposed architecture in the automation industrial settings.

Bibtex

@inproceedings{Waqas7259,
author = {Muhammad Waqas and Per Erik Strandberg and Johan Furun{\"a}s-{\AA}kesson and Saad Mubeen and Mohammad Ashjaei},
title = {Towards Integration of Legacy and Modular Automation Systems with Containerization},
month = {September},
year = {2025},
booktitle = {ETFA'25 IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation},
url = {http://www.es.mdu.se/publications/7259-}
}