Electrical and Mechanical Services Department (EMSD)
The project aims at developing the technology foundations for enabling System-Level Design and Implementation of a Trusted Robotic System Platform for distributed and interlinked robotic systems to conduct concerted operations in human-centric environment by adopting the Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and Open Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Command and Control (C&C) Architecture for fulfilling flexible safety and security requirements. The Trusted Robotic System Platform is developed based on Smart Safety Automation and the Open Platform Communications - Unified Architecture (OPC-UA). The concept of Agent Systems developed for Smart Safety Automation is adopted to enable a systematic and simple decomposition of the complexity in the development of distributed automation systems. The main idea is the use of risk reduction agents at the module interfaces with defined decision trees to validate the safety and security of the interfaces to the linked systems. OPC-UA as a platform independent service-oriented architecture provides the necessary infrastructure for interoperability across the Enterprise, from Machine-to-Machine, Machine-to-Enterprise and everything in-between and is firewall-friendly while addressing security concerns by providing a suite of controls. By utilizing Model-Based System Engineering (MBSE) approach, Digital and Physical Twins of various kinds of robotic systems supported by the platform can be validated against the system requirements by conducting Model/Software/Hardware-In-The-Loop Simulations and Physical Execution. This is a Government Initiated Project (GIP) with Electrical and Mechanical Services Department (EMSD). After the completion of the project, an open standard developed will be promoted for supporting distributed and interlinked robotic systems to conduct concerted operations in human-centric environment. Aligned with the second edition of Smart City Blueprint for Hong Kong (Blueprint 2.0), this project can bring benefits and convenience of robotic systems to the public so that residents can better perceive the benefits from Smart City and Innovation and Technology (I&T) in their daily lives.