Bloqqi

Bloqqi is a visual dataflow-based language for building control systems. The initial version of the language was developed by Niklas Fors and Görel Hedin at Lund University in collaboration with ABB.

During 2017-2020, the development of Bloqqi is supported by the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (VINNOVA), within the strategic innovation program Process Industrial IT and Automation, under contract number (2017-02371).

Source code

The source code for the compiler and the editor are available on Bitbucket. Both tools are covered by the Modified BSD License.

• bloqqi-compiler (git tag: 1.0.0)
• bloqqi-editor (git tag: 0.2.7, release notes)

Demonstrators

Demonstrators 1 (2018-08):

• 1a: Bloqqi programs can be exported as FMUs, see bloqqi-fmi
• 1b: A web-based user interface can be generated for Bloqqi programs, see bloqqi-operator-ui

Demonstrators 2 (2019-08):

• 2a: Support for combining dataflow diagrams with state machines, and support for executing multiple Bloqqi programs together (parallel execution). See bloqqi-multi-tank-example for an example.
• 2b: Support for generating test coverage based on state machines. See bloqqi-coverage-example for an example.

Demonstrators 3 (2020-08):

• 3a: Support for distributed execution of Bloqqi programs over MQTT. See bloqqi-dist-tank-example for an example.
• 3b: PID feature library. See bloqqi-pid for an example.

Publications

[1]	Niklas Fors, Alfred Theorin, Sven Gestegård Robertz, and Görel Hedin. Feature-oriented control programming. In 25th IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation, ETFA 2020, Vienna, Austria, September 8-11, 2020, 2020. Video presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDm_hhKf5Sw. [ bib ]
[2]	Niklas Fors, Joel Petersson, and Maria Henningsson. Generating fmus for the feature-based language Bloqqi. In 2nd Japanese Modelica Conference, Tokyo, Japan, May 17-18, 2018, pages 245--254, 2018. [ bib | .pdf ]
[3]	Niklas Fors. The Design and Implementation of Bloqqi - A Feature-Based Diagram Programming Language. PhD thesis, Lund University, October 2016. [ bib | .pdf ]
[4]	Niklas Fors and Görel Hedin. Visual instance inlining and specialization: Building domain-specific diagrams from reusable types. In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Real World Domain Specific Languages, RWDSL '16, pages 4:1--4:10. ACM, 2016. [ bib | http ]
[5]	Niklas Fors and Görel Hedin. Bloqqi: modular feature-based block diagram programming. In 2016 ACM International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software, Onward! 2016, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, November 2-4, 2016, pages 57--73, 2016. [ bib | DOI | .pdf ]
[6]	Niklas Fors and Görel Hedin. Intercepting dataflow connections in diagrams with inheritance. In IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, pages 21--24, July 2014. [ bib | DOI ]
[7]	Niklas Fors and Görel Hedin. Implementing semantic feedback in a diagram editor. In Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Graphical Modeling Language Development, GMLD '13, pages 42--50. ACM, 2013. [ bib | DOI ]
[8]	Niklas Fors and Görel Hedin. Reusing semantics in visual editors: A case for reference attribute grammars. In Proc. 12th International Workshop on Graph Transformation and Visual Modeling Techniques (GT-VMT 2013), volume 58. ECEASST, 2013. [ bib | DOI ]
[9]	Niklas Fors and Görel Hedin. Refactoring techniques for visual editing of hybrid languages. In Proc. 6th Workshop on Refactoring Tools, pages 17--20. ACM, 2013. [ bib | DOI ]
[10]	Niklas Fors and Görel Hedin. Handling of layout-sensitive semantics in a visual control language. In Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 2012 IEEE Symposium on, pages 249--250, 30 2012-oct. 4 2012. [ bib | DOI ]

Video

A video introducing recommendations can be seen here.