Dealing with intensive distributed video-traffic in reconfigurable automation applications

Video traffic is increasingly used in modern factory automation applications in order to improve the quality of the processes. However, since they require high bandwidth it may be difficult for critical applications to adapt dynamically to bandwidth requirements that may change in time, without affecting the performance of the overall applications, especially when they are time-sensitive. In this scenario, the use of high-level middleware architectures may ease this task by providing mechanisms to reconfigure the systems at run-time. This work shows how the so-called FTT-MA (Flexible Time-Triggered Middleware Architecture) may be used in a sample application in order to manage the bandwidth of a laboratory application in which several video cameras are involved. FTT-MA hides the complexity of modifying the bandwidth requirements of the application at runtime according to the needs of the application.