Bringing internet architectures into the plant: The case of HMI

This paper presents a novel approach to the design of Human Machine Interface (HMI) systems to be adopted in the supervision of industrial plants. We describe how well known technologies and practices can be transferred from internet-based architectures to embedded systems. We propose a mix of technologies that can be fruitfully used in the implementation of HMI architectures and provide a sketch of the design of a real industrial HMI system that exploit internet communication protocols and Web-based architectures. A set of new features can be achieved thanks to this architecture, such as application adaptivity, interface personalization, control remotization, and multi-channel notification. Finally, we evaluate the resulting platform in terms of performance, reliability, and usability.