Guided AL

Building automation is an industry in transition. In addition to the standardized fieldbus solutions that have existed for many years, such as (e.g.) KNX, new and, above all, many cheaper automation solutions are now being added steadily and at high speed. It is therefore foreseeable that existing value chains based on the sale and often complex installation of automation components will fade into the background. However, the ever-increasing number of fully or partially automated buildings is creating a new, interesting and growing market for new intelligent value-added services relating to building automation. Automated residential and functional buildings are cyber-physical systems which, thanks to their extensive sensor technology and comprehensive control options, form a technically very well-equipped basis for industry-specific, intelligent value-added services (Smart Services), which are to be investigated as part of the technology competition "Smart Service World - Internet-based Services for Business Studies". Smart services can relate both to more intelligent control of the building itself and to intelligent services for the users of a building.

The "Guided Autonomous Locations (Guided AL)" research project is investigating the technical requirements needed to create and offer smart services across buildings on the basis of existing and new automation solutions. In addition to the necessary platform infrastructure for more comprehensive smart service solutions, emphasis is also placed on the easy feasibility of smaller, thematically focused, intelligent applications, e.g. in the form of special apps on the autonomous locations service platform to be created. The project investigates and implements approaches for the service platform and realizes exemplary applications from the areas of living, working, shopping and health based on the autonomous locations service platform.

The implementation of new smart services has so far been severely hampered by the still extremely heterogeneous system landscape in the field of building automation, as there are a large number of different fieldbus and middleware systems that are not compatible with each other or are only compatible to a limited extent. In addition, the various systems have very different levels of abstraction with regard to the data and functions provided, which makes it almost impossible to interpret the data meaningfully outside of one's own system environment. Another disadvantage of existing solutions is that data collection and control functionalities are limited to a single building. For external providers of intelligent additional services, it would therefore currently only be technically and economically possible to adapt their own services to any existing automation solution with immense effort. However, these development costs are not the only fixed costs, as competitors' programming interfaces have to be constantly examined in order to maintain their own services.

All conceivable new smart services depend on uniformly defined, manufacturer-neutral and modularly expandable and customizable interfaces. The open autonomous locations service platform envisaged in Guided AL, which is based on established web standards, is therefore researching how data and functions from existing automation systems can be transferred to a system-independent service platform and, if necessary, made available to external services and other technical systems across buildings. In addition to the actual data, the Autonomous Locations platform will of course also offer cross-environment automation services that seamlessly combine the living, working and shopping environments. Other components include a service repository and an execution environment (service engine) for smart services. The aim is to keep the technical hurdles as low as possible, even for smaller service providers, and to make it easier to set up more complex smart services.

In Guided AL, the technical requirements are created and evaluated in order to develop a new market for intelligent value-added services in the field of building automation. After appropriate approval and authorization, external service providers can compile the required data and basic functions from the Autonomous Locations service platform and use them to create new, intelligent services that generate interesting added value for the respective customers, e.g. offered as an app.

The project partners

hager, banbutsu, Scheer