Sercos Robot a Hit at Hannover Fair!


Sercos International, supplier of the Sercos® automation bus, recorded growing interest in Sercos-capable products at Hanover Fair 2015.



A robotic demo from Schneider Electric was the highlight, attracting many visitors who used the opportunity to test their abilities by playing the robo-based game of Tic-Tac-Toe!



The robotic solution consists of a fully stainless-steel PacDrive P4-robot and an MAXR gantry robot. Both are part of Schneider Electric's line of Robotics products. The 3-axis P4 delta robot sets the gaming pieces while the 3-axis portal moves the board with its additional rotary axis. To perform this task, the P4 picker has to synchronize with four mechanically coupled axes (3 linear, 1 rotary). After each automatic move by the robot, the visitor sets his gaming piece using the human-machine interface. This allowed the visitor to play an active role in the game and in the robot's actions.  A Magelis handheld touch panel served as the operational interface.



In addition, Bosch Rexroth showed its Sercans Sercos master module with the slogan "one cable instead of three."  This is one of the first products for the common Sercos III and EtherNet/IP infrastructure. The parallel communication of Sercos III, EtherNet/IP, TCP/IP and safety-related communication significantly eases automation and allows engineers and system integrators to combine devices from different manufacturers that support Sercos, EtherNet/IP or TCP/IP. This PC plug-in card simplifies the automation of individual machine modules as well as entire machines.



A high interest was also recorded in the topics of image processing and coupling of Sercos with AS-i (actuator-sensor interface).



Vision Control presented its pictor® and vicosys® camera systems, plus a demo that showed a high performance Sercos-driven camera in action.



The interconnectivity of Sercos with AS-i was of special interest to visitors who were looking for easy, cost effective and flexible networking at the lowest automation level, while also easily networking with the specific needs of the machine and/or plant. Bihl+Wiedemann presented AS-i systems which perfectly complement industrial Ethernet systems for transmission of process data and safety data.



"We are very pleased to note the continuously growing interest in Sercos-capable products, which is also confirmed by the 5 million real-time nodes of our installed base," said Peter Lutz, Managing Director of Sercos International.



Additional information can be obtained via our eNewsletter or website.



About Sercos International



Sercos International is an association of users and manufacturers that is in charge of technical development, standardization, certification and marketing for the Sercos automation bus. Conformance tests guarantee that Sercos implementations are standard-compliant, ensuring that devices from different manufacturers can be combined. Based in Germany, the organization presently has more than 90 member companies located around the world and has national liaison offices in North America and Asia.



About Sercos



The SErial Realtime COmmunication System, or Sercos, is one of the world's leading digital interfaces for communication between controls, drives and decentralized peripheral devices. Sercos has been used in machine engineering for approximately 25 years and is implemented in over 5 million real-time nodes. With its open, manufacturer-independent Ethernet-based architecture, Sercos III is a universal bus for all automation solutions.








All Topics