A system for managing communication between building management system (BMS) devices includes a memory and a controller. The memory includes instructions stored thereon. The controller is configured to execute the instructions to implement an agent manager, a zone manager, and a channel manager. The agent manager is configured to generate an agent for each of the BMS devices. The zone manager is configured to define at least one zone relating to a physical location zone or a building control zone. The channel manager is configured to generate a communication channel associated with the at least one zone. The channel manager is further configured to manage registration of an agent to the communication channel, wherein an agent is configured to communicate over a communication channel in response to being registered to the communication channel.

The present disclosure is directed to systems, methods and devices for facilitating object-based cross-domain industrial automation control. An object library comprising a plurality of objects may be maintained. One or more of the objects may represent physical counterparts for use in an industrial automation process. Each object of the plurality of objects in the object library may have at least one property that an automated control device operation can be programmed to act on. Each object of the plurality of objects may also have at least one property that a human machine interface component can utilize in generating display elements corresponding to the objects for display on the human machine interface. When modifications to objects in the object library are received, those modifications may be automatically deployed and incorporated in controller logic and HMI graphics and control.

The described techniques enable a skid communicator tool to quickly change network settings to those required by a particular skid or network in a process control environment with which a user of the tool wishes to establish communication. These techniques are helpful because skids and networks in process control environments often require different network settings for any device attempting to communicate with the skids or network, and a user often must manually load these network settings every time she wants to communicate with a different network or skid. By contrast, the techniques enable the skid communicator tool to seamlessly connect to, disconnect from, and reconnect to any of the skids or other networks requiring different network settings with minimal input from the user, thus enabling a user to easily move through and interact with different areas, units, or equipment of the process control environment.

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.

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 system includes a programmable logic control (PLC) module, an input/output (IO) network bus coupled to the PLC module and provided at facets of a mainframe. A first process chamber attached to a first facet of the facets. A chamber interface IO sub-module is attached to the first facet and coupled to the IO network bus and to a process chamber IO controller of the first process chamber. The chamber interface IO sub-module is to: convert interlock relay signals, received via dry contact exchange with the process chamber IO controller, to digital signals; combine the digital signals into network packets adapted for communication using a protocol of the IO network bus; and transmit the network packets to the PLC module over the IO network bus.

A dynamic environment (e.g., an automated industrial process) has multiple conditions in response to which corresponding actions are required, and comprises various equipment, control device(s) to control the equipment, and one or more sensors to generate input signal(s) representing a monitored condition of the environment. A control system for the environment comprises a master processor and one or more co-processors, wherein the master processor configures a given co-processor to evaluate only a first subset of conditions expected to occur in the environment within a specified time period (e.g., less than a response time of the master processor), and to provide first control information representing an action to be taken if a particular condition of the first subset is satisfied. The co-processor receives the input signal(s) representing the monitored condition, processes the input signal(s) so as to determine if the particular condition of the first subset is satisfied, and provides the first control information to the control devices so as to control the equipment. Exemplary applications include dynamic environments in which machine vision techniques and/or equipment are employed.

A method of performing failover for programmable logic controllers (PLCs) in an automation environment and controlling a physical system includes an input/output module receiving sensor inputs from field devices and creating a copy of the sensor inputs for a first group of PLC in a first PLC bank. The input/output module transfers the copy the sensor inputs to each PLC in the first group of PLCs and receives processing results from each PLC in the first group of PLCs in response to transferring the copy of the sensor inputs. The input/output module determines whether there are any inconsistencies between the processing results received from each PLC in the first group of PLCs. If there are any inconsistencies between the processing results received from each PLC in the first group of PLCs, a failover control process is initiated by sending a failover control message to a second input/output module.

A high availability industrial automation system in disclosed. The system has a primary industrial automation controller, a secondary industrial automation controller, and a communication network connected to the primary industrial automation controller and the secondary industrial automation controller. The primary industrial automation controller includes a processor and a memory configured to store a plurality of instructions, a plurality of automation tasks, input/output (I/O) data, and internal storage data. The processor is operative to execute the plurality of instructions to cross load information from the primary industrial automation controller to the secondary industrial automation controller. The cross loading of information can be less than the maximum amount of communicable information capable of being cross loaded. Also disclosed are methods of communicating over the high availability industrial automation system.