Provided is a numerical controller capable of efficient signal transmission and reception to and from a retrofitted PLC. A numerical controller includes a numerical control unit, a built-in PLC, and a retrofitted PLC operating at a predetermined control period different from those of the numerical control unit and the built-in PLC. The retrofitted PLC is configured to detect external triggers issued from the numerical control unit and the built-in PLC, execute a sequence processing for numerical control processing upon detection of the external trigger issued from the numerical control unit, and execute a sequence processing for built-in PLC processing upon detection of the external trigger issued from the built-in PLC.

A technology for associating and ascertaining the location of device variables which are in a control program and correspond to devices, and the dependency relations between the device variables, when division programming is carried out, is provided. A graph display device according to one aspect of the present invention generates a first directed graph, which comprises a plurality of first nodes respectively representing the device variables, and edges representing the existence of a dependency relation, and a second directed graph, which comprises a plurality of regions corresponding respectively to each subprogram, a plurality of first nodes, and edges, wherein the first nodes are arranged in a region of a subprogram that uses the device variable to be expressed from among the plurality of regions. In response to an instruction from a user the display device switches between displaying the generated first directed graph and displaying the generated second directed graph.

An HMI renders on an HMI screen a process line which includes: a movable looper group part obtained by grouping at least one movable roll part and a plurality of line parts connected to the movable roll part; and a plurality of fixed roll parts connected to the movable looper group part. The HMI continuously obtains a process line length from an output signal of a monitoring target device. The HMI calculates a looper movement amount by dividing a difference between a process line total length and the process line length by the number of parts in the plurality of line parts which are shared by the movable looper group part with the plurality of fixed roll parts. The HMI changes a relative position between the plurality of fixed roll parts and the movable looper group part on the HMI screen according to the looper movement amount.

An HMI renders on an HMI screen a process line which includes: a movable looper group part obtained by grouping at least one movable roll part and a plurality of line parts connected to the movable roll part; and a plurality of fixed roll parts connected to the movable looper group part. The HMI continuously obtains a process line length from an output signal of a monitoring target device. The HMI calculates a looper movement amount by dividing a difference between a process line total length and the process line length by the number of parts in the plurality of line parts which are shared by the movable looper group part with the plurality of fixed roll parts. The HMI changes a relative position between the plurality of fixed roll parts and the movable looper group part on the HMI screen according to the looper movement amount.

An industrial integrated development environment (IDE) supports open or extensible application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable end users (e.g., plant asset owners, original equipment manufacturers (OEM), system integrators, etc.) to build upon the IDE's development platform to create custom views or to code custom functionality. This can include, for example, defining a control programming syntax supported by the industrial IDE, customizing a development environment view afforded by the IDE's interface, modifying or creating project editing functions, defining customized programming guardrails designed to guide compliance with in-house programming standards, or other such IDE customizations.

An industrial integrated development environment (IDE) supports open or extensible application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable end users (e.g., plant asset owners, original equipment manufacturers (OEM), system integrators, etc.) to build upon the IDE's development platform to create custom views or to code custom functionality. This can include, for example, defining a control programming syntax supported by the industrial IDE, customizing a development environment view afforded by the IDE's interface, modifying or creating project editing functions, defining customized programming guardrails designed to guide compliance with in-house programming standards, or other such IDE customizations.

Network of safety PLCs employs multi-PLC verification of a programming application before allowing the application to reprogram any PLC on the safety network. Each PLC on the safety network is equipped with authentication capability that detects attempts to reprogram the PLC and issues an authentication challenge requiring the programming application to process a proof-of-work. The authentication challenge is also sent to other PLCs on the safety network along with the response from the programming application for verification purposes. The other PLCs process the authentication challenge and check the response from the programming application for acceptability. If a majority of the PLCs on the safety network determines the response from the programming application is correct, then the programming application is verified and may proceed with the reprogramming. Such group authentication requires a malicious application to hijack multiple PLCs concurrently on the safety network, a highly unlikely outcome, before reprogramming any PLC.

A novel and useful acknowledgement and adaptive frequency hopping mechanism for use in wireless communication systems such as IO-Link Wireless. One or two additional acknowledgement bits are added to packet transmissions. One is a current acknowledgment bit which indicates whether a packet was successfully received anytime during the current cycle. The second bit is a previous acknowledgment bit which indicates whether packets were received successfully anytime during the previous cycle. An adaptive hopping table is constructed using a greedy algorithm which chooses frequencies with the best PER for transmission of higher priority packets, while equalizing the PER products across cycles. A last resort frequency mechanism further improves transmission success by switching to a better performing channel for the last subcycle when previous attempts to transmit a high priority packet have failed.

A robot system includes a robot arm, encoders configured to acquire position information of the robot arm, a first control section configured to execute control processing for controlling operation of the robot arm, and a second control section provided independently from the first control section and configured to transmit a position information request signal for requesting the position information to the encoders. The second control section transmits an interrupt signal to the first control section according to the transmission of the position information request signal. The first control section executes the control processing based on the interrupt signal and the position information output from the encoders based on the position information request signal.

A robot system includes a robot arm, encoders configured to acquire position information of the robot arm, a first control section configured to execute control processing for controlling operation of the robot arm, and a second control section provided independently from the first control section and configured to transmit a position information request signal for requesting the position information to the encoders. The second control section transmits an interrupt signal to the first control section according to the transmission of the position information request signal. The first control section executes the control processing based on the interrupt signal and the position information output from the encoders based on the position information request signal.