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Attractive application areas of the Sercos technology drew visitors to the booth the at SPS Show

Sercos International attracted visitors with a rally racing simulator during the recent SPS IPC Drives Show in Nuremberg, Germany.

The simulator, based on Bosch Rexroth eMotion technology, offered more than 150 visitors a particularly realistic racing simulation. Real high-frequency movements delivered an authentic rally racing experience for the driver.

Visitors to the Sercos® booth learned more about the latest trends and technologies such as the transmission of the Sercos III real-time protocol via IEEE 802.1 TSN (time-sensitive networks) via a Sercos TSN demonstrator. It showed the possibilities for providing a real-time and multi-protocol-capable network infrastructure based on TSN for automation technology. The demonstrator was developed at the Institute for Control Engineering of Machine Tools and Manufacturing Units (ISW) at the University of Stuttgart with the support of several industrial partners, such as Tenasys.

Another highlight was an Industry 4.0 demonstrator that showed how process and device data are made available both locally via the real-time bus and also via OPC UA for a range of application scenarios in a uniform and cross-manufacturer manner. This makes data exchange between machine peripheries and superior IT systems easier and also supports the requirements of Industry 4.0 regarding semantic interoperability.

The multi-protocol capability of Sercos makes various implementation options possible. One option is the integration of the OPC UA server functionality that can be integrated into a machine control, where the control acts as a gateway in which the mapping of Sercos services and data is implemented. With Sercos III it is also possible to integrate an OPC UA server directly into a Sercos field device (drive, I/O station or sensor). In this case, the OPC protocol is routed directly to the relevant Sercos slave device. The gateway functionality of the control is thus reduced to the function of an Ethernet switch. Due to the Sercos transmission process (no tunneling!), the ability of an OPC client and an OPC UA server to communicate with each other is preserved even without continuous Sercos communication running. 

Sercos showed a Sercos SoftMaster demo, offering high speed and hard real-time by using a standard Ethernet controller instead of special hardware. 

The Sercos Slave Prototyping demo with EasySlave Kit for Arduino, developed by Steinbeis Embedded Systems Technologies was also on display. It is a Sercos III product that uses an Arduino board as a rapid prototype platform for the application and a corresponding shield with a Sercos EasySlave FPGA, as well as other peripheral components. With these compact elements, the developer uses free and freely available software tools to create his prototypical Sercos application, from which corresponding Sercos III devices are then derived and implemented.

Additional demos from Bihl+Wiedemann, Bosch Rexroth, Cannon-Automata, Phoenix Contact and Schneider Electric Automation, as well as numerous products displayed on the Sercos product walls, completed the Sercos exhibition presence. 

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