Author: Texas Instruments (TI) Industrial Automation Business Manager Srik Gurrapu
summary
In today's increasingly competitive global marketplace, efficient industrial production typically depends on the speed, accuracy and reliability of each factory automation system. Even in areas with low labor costs, manufacturers are eager to improve the precision of their automation systems because they know that if they don't, they will endanger their position in the global economy.
At the heart of industrial automation is a new generation of advanced smart sensors that keep production lines running, connected to high-performance programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and human machine interface (HMI) systems through low latency and real-time networks. Of course, time is money for manufacturers. Efficient production lines will continue to operate as quickly as possible as long as the manufactured products are able to reach the required level of quality. High-speed, reliable sensors must monitor or measure various states of the production line very quickly (in milliseconds or even faster). The network must then transmit this information with minimal time delay and without disrupting production. We need a large number of industrial communication protocols to achieve the required key communication performance, such as PROFIBUS®/PROFINET®, Ethernet/IPTM, EtherCAT®, POWERLINK, SERCOS® III, etc. In addition, processing components such as PLCs must respond correctly in real time, otherwise productivity will be affected and loss of profits (see Figure 1 below).
Texas Instruments (TI) has extensive experience in providing comprehensive, high-performance, efficient, and scalable technologies for industrial automation. Texas Instruments' extensive line of analog and embedded processor products enables customers to design complete system-level solutions. This article highlights TI's innovative, highly differentiated solutions that make industrial communications less costly, easier to access, and drive automation and productivity gains.
Figure 1 HMI + PLC + sensor + motor controlled industrial automation system
Industrial Automation Introduction
A typical industrial automation system typically consists of four major components, between which low latency and real-time high-speed communication can be implemented. The four components are: sensor, human machine interface, PLC and motor driver.
sensor
The information and data transmission of modern factory automation systems is increasingly dependent on smart sensors. In the past, sensors were only responsible for monitoring and measuring, but not for analysis. Now, as sensors become smarter, they are better able to evaluate the work they are testing and get the job done in real time. Many of the sensor's functions include temperature, motion, optical object and position, weight, acceleration, chemical composition, gas, air pressure or other pressure, liquid flow, and other aspects of the physical world.
Human Machine Interface (HMI)
A human machine interface is a unit or subsystem that communicates with a controller. Using state-of-the-art technology, the human-machine interface of most industrial automation systems integrates graphical display subsystems such as touch screens, which are intuitive and easy to learn.
Programmable Logic Controller (PLC)
In general, PLCs are microcontroller- or processor-based systems that receive information from a variety of sensors and system operators distributed throughout the plant. Based on the information provided by the two sources, the PLC initiates actions to control the production line.
Motor driver
The motor drive is some machine part that actually responds to PLC commands. For example, in a car assembly plant, the sensor provides the PLC with information about the position of the car body. The PLC responds to this information by issuing an instruction to the motor control unit to control the robot arm to spot weld the car.
In industrial automation systems, these four major connections are achieved through high-speed, low-latency networks. This network ensures a fast response to the PLC's sensor or operator information input. In general, today's industrial automation systems are real-time, decision-making, high-precision systems that precisely control high-speed production processes.
Future challenges
The basic challenges that industrial automation will face are the same as the challenges we have overcome. To achieve better results, control systems must continue to improve their real-time responsiveness, reliability, accuracy, precision, and overall maturity. An essential condition for meeting these requirements is the continuous development of networking and other networking technologies.
In the industrial automation market, there are more than 120 serial communication standards and 25 Ethernet-based protocols, all of which can be deployed in our factories today. The problem is that what we lack is not the solution, but their diversity and the way they are deployed.
Every popular industrial communication protocol, such as PROFIBUS/PROFINET, EtherCAT, Ethernet/IP, etc., has one or more important sensors, PLC, HMI and motor driver suppliers behind the scenes. Implementing industrial automation systems using components from multiple vendors typically requires the deployment of several communication protocols supported by multiple vendors. This increases the complexity of the overall system and increases costs. For example, many automation systems today typically use a central processing unit (CPU) to run applications and then use another discrete component such as an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) or field programmable gate array (FPGA). ), specifically for communication protocol processing. This is especially true in some automation components that are considered as slave devices by communication protocols.
Most industrial automation communication protocols use a hierarchical master/slave architecture. The main device is generally a PLC, or some intelligent control unit. The slave device is typically a motor driver and some sensors that do not initiate an action or control process. In order to achieve the high speed, low latency communication required by the automation system to carry the network, many protocols enhance the media access (MAC) layer functionality associated with these slave devices. This imposes a greater burden of local protocol processing on the slave device, ultimately resulting in the use of protocol processing dedicated ASICs or FPGAs in distributed slave devices. And because the slave devices in industrial automation systems are usually more than the master devices, the overall system cost is greatly increased.
TI is working with you to meet the challenge
Meeting these challenges in industrial automation requires advanced technology to enable communication networking and rationalization. TI is committed to providing industrial automation system manufacturers with complete solutions for embedded processors, sensors, software building blocks and supporting tools. This technology must be simple and cost-effective to meet the requirements of critical components (PLCs, HMIs, sensors, and motor drives) in such systems, while supporting the grading requirements of master and slave devices. In addition, TI focuses on providing an efficient support solution that simplifies the deployment of its factory automation systems to meet the diverse needs of its customers.
The success of TI solutions is demonstrated by the excellent performance of SitaraTM ARM®-based processors in industrial automation applications. Sitara AM18x ARM9TM (and the latest AM335x ARM CortexTM-A8 System-on-Chip (SoC)), integrates multiple processing cores, real-time communication accelerators for multi-protocol processing, real-time and advanced operating systems, graphics processing and numerous other resources The processing work to overcome the challenges of industrial automation in the coming years.
In particular, the AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 SoC is an example of TI's industrial automation development strategy. Using processing speeds from 275 GHz to 1 GHz, the AM335x SoC can handle the processing requirements of smart sensors to PLCs and other automation components in between. In addition, the low power consumption allows the AM335x processor to handle the most stringent power budgets.
Figure 2 Sitara ARM AM335x processor structure
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