Skip to content

Ecosystem

GLACIER is not a single program. It is a set of libraries and applications that share the machine data model as a common interface.

machine-data-model frost-planner frost frost-template frost-playground ice-frost xppu-frost interface library scheduling library simulation framework project starter examples ICE laboratory xPPU demonstrator
How the GLACIER repositories depend on one another.

Core libraries

machine-data-model declares what a machine exposes. It is a Python library with no dependency on Frost: a YAML file describes a tree of folders, variables and methods, and the library turns it into an object that can be read, written, invoked and subscribed to. Connectors map that tree onto an OPC UA server or an MQTT broker.

frost turns a data model into a component that lives in a network. It is a library of Lingua Franca reactors providing messaging, registration, routing and periodic update delivery, so that a machine or a control application only has to supply its own behaviour.

frost-planner solves flexible job-shop scheduling problems. Frost depends on it: the FrostScheduler reactor uses a frost-planner scheduling instance to decide which method to invoke on which machine.

Getting started

frost-template is a GitHub template with the directory layout, configuration files and a main reactor already in place.

frost-playground collects small self-contained examples — publisher/subscriber, sensor/alarm, a stock-market toy, a production scheduler.

The playground tracks the released Frost, not the current one

frost-playground pins Frost as a submodule at the main branch, which is Frost v1.0.0. Its examples therefore use the v1.0.0 component names (FrostMachine, FrostBus, FrostDataModel), which were replaced on the current development branch. See Versions.

Applications

ice-frost models the production line of the ICE laboratory in Verona. Each machine extends FrostReactor; a Scheduler reads a recipe from YAML, turns it into Frost messages, and waits for the expected responses before advancing.

xppu-frost is a digital twin of the Extended Pick&Place Unit, a widely used Industry 4.0 research demonstrator. It models a stack, a crane, a stamp and several conveyors, and includes physics-based variants of some components.

virtualice-image packages the ICE laboratory's data-collection architecture — Kafka, RabbitMQ and supporting services — as a Docker Compose deployment.

Full listing

The Repositories page lists every public GLACIER repository with its purpose, default branch and licence.