B&R reduces cycle times in peripheral devices to 1 µs

April 11, 2014 7:13 am

With reACTION technology, B&R is able to reduce cycle times in industrial automation down to 1 µs. This new approach allows extremely time-critical sub-processes to be managed using standard hardware – all within the requirements of IEC 61131 – while cutting costs by reducing the load on the controller and optimising performance to match demands. The result is an immense increase in performance without added costs. The fastest response times achieved in the field, from receiving the input signal to sending the output signal, have seldom been under 100 µs until now. Increased performance without added cost With reACTION technology, programs created in the function block editor are executed directly on I/O modules from the X20 and X67 series, eliminating internal data transmission and allowing response times to be reduced to as low as 1 µs. B&R takes advantage of the Automation Studio 4 development environment’s ability to allocate software modules to distributed hardware and utilise the surplus capacity of logic components in the modules. This allows function block libraries to be stored there through the use of dynamic updates. These libraries can then be executed locally on the I/O module like the command set for a microcontroller, allowing time-critical sub-processes to be implemented, using standard hardware and eliminating the need for specialised modules – all while reducing the load on network and controller.