2 posts tagged with "PLC"

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.

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.