The reality is: fewer people will come to a website to read through a long technical standard or Application Recommendation from beginning to end. Increasingly, an LLM will do the first reading to find the relevant section, explain a concept, or answer a specific question.
So what should a standards organization offer on its website instead? We think one answer is: make the standards more interactive.
As a first experiment, we have started with our Application Recommendation for Drive Configurations, created by Matthias Müller, Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. and the Drivechain Working Group of the AutomationML e.V. Instead of only providing the document and AutomationML libraries, users can now interactively explore how a drive chain is assembled and how the underlying concepts relate to each other.
Drive Configurations, hands on – assemble a drive chain, describe the movement, and browse the component library directly in the browser.
AR Drive Configurations (M-CAD aspects) – the Application Recommendation itself, with abstract, scope, citation and download.
The PDF is not going away. Neither are the formal specifications behind it. But we want to add another layer: one that makes it easier to explore, understand and learn how AutomationML is actually used.
This is a first step and something we would like to extend to further AutomationML specifications and Application Recommendations.