Moritz Walker

Modular and portable control software is becoming a key enabler for flexible production systems in industrial automation. Our WebAssembly-based approach provides a common abstraction for real-time and non real-time control modules through a lightweight, sandboxed execution environment. Think containerization, but fine-grained and real-time. This article dives into some of the underlying concepts. So-called isolated WASM modules, combined with real-time scheduling and low-latency communication, allow to build systems', which achieve secure, highly portable, and resource-efficient control software.

Modular and portable control software is becoming a key enabler for flexible production systems in industrial automation.
Our WebAssembly-based approach provides a common abstraction for real-time and non real-time control modules through a lightweight, sandboxed execution environment. Think containerization, but fine-grained and real-time. This article dives into some of the underlying concepts. So-called isolated WASM modules, combined with real-time scheduling and low-latency communication, allow our system to achieve secure, highly portable, and resource-efficient control software.

TSN is an important building block for convergent communication in flexible production. Mastering and integrating existing field bus technologies such as EtherCAT is an important part of the transition. Let's take stock of what is already possible. This article was first released in Computer&Automation in German.

This article was first released in SPS_MAGAZIN in German.

The programming of systems and machines is traditionally done with PLCs based on the IEC61131 standard, which originated in the 1990s. However, software development has changed dramatically over the last 30 years, which is also reflected in the programming languages. This article explores the questions of why it is worth reconsidering classic PLC programming and why the Rust language, of all things, should serve as the basic building block.

Static configurations and slow adjustments to changing requirements characterise today's production systems. In order to be able to deal with variable external influences, these systems must become more flexible. Modular, virtualised real-time architectures, which are implemented as distributed real-time systems, are a fundamental building block for making automation systems more flexible from a software point of view. However, the additional modularity and flexibility come at the cost of greater complexity. In order to enable developers to design and manage robust systems with regard to real-time properties, a tool has been developed at the ISW based on a domain-specific language, which allows the analysis of real-time behaviour as well as the automated real-time orchestration of container-based control applications with Kubernetes and Docker-Compose. This article was first released in SPS-MAGAZIN in German.