On the way to Control Technology 5.0

Control technology is on its way to making the step to virtual control - Control 5.0. But haven't we just reached Industry 4.0? In order to better understand what developments are taking place in control technology, it is first worth looking back at the individual stages of evolution in this first article on the subject of virtual controllers. Part 2 then presents how to use virtual controllers and the possible use cases. However, one practical benefit is obvious: The dependency on hardware is dissolved - not a mistake in case of delivery bottlenecks.

While the majority of controls in use today are based on a hardware platform, it is ultimately already the software that determines the function of the process. If we talk about virtual controllers recently, this of course also requires hardware for execution. In contrast to the software-based controllers (Control 4.0), however, the hardware is now completely abstracted. This means that the executed SoftPLC no longer needs to know which device it is running on.

Before that, however, it is worth taking a look at the levels 1.0 to 4.0 of control technology, which is given here in Part 1 of the article on virtual controllers.

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This article is only available in German language.

Author: Roland Wagner, Head of Product Marketing, Codesys GmbH

 

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