A method is provided for connecting an input/output interface of a tester equipped for control unit development to a model of a technical system present in the tester using an already-existing basic test model of a control unit. The input/output interface is designed for connecting a hardware implementation of the control unit or for connecting a technical system to be controlled, and the model to be connected to the input/output interface is a test model of the technical system to be controlled or a test model of the control unit. The already-existing basic test model of the control unit is accessed, and at least one communication requirement is extracted from the basic test model of the control unit.

Provided is an analysis apparatus comprising: a variation model storage unit configured to store a plurality of variation models indicating variation in characteristics of a plant corresponding to an operating condition of the plant; a model extraction unit configured to acquire structure information indicating a structure model of an analysis target plant and to extract the variation model corresponding to the structure model; and an analysis unit configured to analyze the analysis target plant, based on the structure model of the analysis target plant and the variation model extracted by the model extraction unit.

A method for surveying an environment includes segmenting a plurality of nodes into a plurality of communities. The method includes identifying a plurality of community centroids based on the plurality of communities, where each community centroid from among the plurality of community centroids is associated with one community from among the plurality of communities. The method includes determining, for each community centroid from among the plurality of community centroids, a community type of the community centroid, where the community type is one of a primary type and an auxiliary type, and where the community type is based on a distance between the community centroid and one or more charging stations. The method includes generating a plurality of intercommunity routes based on the plurality of community centroids, the one or more charging stations, the community type, and one or more performance constraints.

A method for providing process data of a device in an industrial automation environment to a computer system. In one embodiment, the method includes the following steps: executing a process data model on the device for generating estimated process data; determining that the estimated process data deviates from the real process data by more than a threshold value; and only if the estimated process data deviates from the real process data by more than the threshold value: transmitting information representing the real process data from the device to the computer system.