Process image within controllers enabling visibility and accessibility of real world objects

1. An automation system comprising:

a plurality of digital twins, each digital twin being a digital version of a corresponding physical device of a plurality of physical devices within the automation system;

a plurality of controller devices, wherein each controller device of the plurality of controller devices comprises a volatile computer-readable storage medium comprising a local process image area for controlling one or more physical devices of the plurality of physical devices;

a process image backbone connected to the plurality of controller devices and providing applications within the automation system with uniform access to the local process image area of each controller device so as to define a common process image that provides access to each digital twin by each application of the applications at respective runtimes associated with the applications that are decoupled from each other; and

a registry comprising the plurality of digital twins, wherein each digital twin corresponds to a respective physical device of the plurality of physical devices controllable via a select one of the controller devices via the local process image area of the select controller device.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein each digital twin of the plurality of digital twins is an object instantiated from an object oriented class.

3. The system of claim 2 , wherein each object oriented class comprises function calls which utilize the process image backbone to interact with the local process image area of at least one controller.

4. The system of claim 1 , comprising a computing device configured to create each digital twin in the registry in response to detecting an addition of the physical device into the automation system.

5. The system of claim 4 , wherein the computing device is a human-machine interface (HMI) device.

6. The system of claim 4 , where the computing device detects the addition of the physical device based on a message transmitted from a corresponding controller device.

7. The system of claim 6 , wherein the corresponding controller device is coupled to one or more sensors and the message is transmitted to the computing device in response to activation of the one or more sensors.

8. The system of claim 4 , wherein the registry is stored as a database in the computing device.

9. The system of claim 1 , wherein the registry is stored as a distributed database across the plurality of controller devices.

10. A computer-implemented method for using a plurality of digital twins to interact with a plurality of physical devices in an automation system, each digital twin of the plurality of digital twins being a digital version of a corresponding physical device of the plurality of physical devices, the method comprising:

receiving, by a computing device, a request to modify a state of a first physical device of the plurality of physical devices in the automation system;

retrieving, by the computing device, a first digital twin of the plurality of digital twins corresponding to the first physical device from a registry;

determining, by the computing device, a function implemented by the first digital twin that corresponds to the state in the request, wherein the function is implemented using local process image data stored on a first controller device of a plurality of controller devices, the first controller device coupled to the first physical device such that the local process image data stored on the first controller device defines data for controlling the first physical device;

calling, by the computing device, the function using the first digital twin; and

a plurality of applications within the automation system accessing, via a process image backbone connected to the plurality of controller devices, the local process image data of each controller device of the plurality of controller devices so as to define a common process image that provides access to each digital twin of the plurality of digital twins by each application of the plurality of applications at respective runtimes associated with the plurality of applications that are decoupled from each other.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the function utilizes the process image backbone to interact with the local process image data stored on each of the plurality of controller devices.

12. The method of claim 10 , further comprising:

deriving one or more function arguments based on the request to modify the state of the first physical device,

wherein the function is called with the one or more function arguments.

13. The method of claim 12 , wherein the one or more function arguments are derived by parsing the request using a natural language processing model.

14. The method of claim 10 , wherein the first digital twin is an object instantiated from an object oriented class.

15. The method of claim 10 , wherein the function is implemented on the first controller device and the function is called by the computing device using a remote procedure call to the controller.

16. A computer-implemented method for using a plurality of digital twins to interact with physical objects in an automation system, each digital twin of the plurality of digital twins being a digital version of a corresponding physical device, the method comprising:

receiving an indication that a new physical device was added to the automation system; determining type information and one or more properties related to the new physical device using an ontology of physical devices related to the automation system;

generating a first digital twin based on the type information and the one or more properties;

storing the first digital twin in a repository with information describing relationships of the new physical device and other physical devices in the automation system, wherein the first digital twin implements one or more functions using local process image data, stored on a controller coupled to the new physical device; and

a plurality of applications within the automation system accessing, via a process image backbone connected to a plurality of controller devices, the local process image data of each controller device of the plurality of controller devices so as to define a common process image area that provides access to each digital twin of the plurality of digital twins by each application of the plurality of applications at respective runtimes associated with the plurality of applications that are decoupled from each other.

17. The method of claim 16 , wherein the first digital twin is an object instantiated from an object oriented class.

18. The method of claim 16 , wherein the indication that the new physical device was added to the automation system is a sensor activation message.

19. The method of claim 16 , further comprising:

determining the information describing relationships of new physical devices and the other physical devices in the automation system using the ontology of physical devices related to the automation system.