Sercos International introduced the transmission of Sercos III real-time protocols via IEEE 802.1 TSN (Time-Sensitive Networks) in a Sercos TSN demonstrator at the recent SPS IPC Drives show, providing a vision of a Sercos future.

The demonstrator was spearheaded by the Institute for Control Engineering of Machine Tools and Manufacturing Units (ISW, University of Stuttgart) and it shows a real-time, multiprotocol-capable network infrastructure based on TSN for automation technology.

The German ke Next magazine introduced the Sercos over TSN demo in its exhibition coverage.

Sercos International also had its Sercos SoftMaster demo on display, which aims to offer high speed and hard real-time using only a standard Ethernet Controller. ISG Industrielle Steuerungstechnik showed off a PC-based pick&place robotics application using the Sercos. Motion programming is done via a PLCopen module using the Multiprog PLC program environment.

Sercos slave prototyping using the EasySlave Kit for Arduino was also demonstrated. Steinbeis Embedded Systems Technologies developed 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 a prototype Sercos application, from which corresponding Sercos III devices are then derived and implemented.