DAC February 2022

n TECHNOLOGY February 2022 www.drivesncontrols.com 22 p A Californian technology developer has launched a family of products that allow Industry 4.0 location awareness systems to be developed and deployed rapidly. The SpaceTrace products from Culvert IoT Corporation combine Bluetooth Low Energy, ultra-wide band and low- power cellular technologies in a“pick and mix” way to cater for specific applications. Culvert says that no two asset-tracking applications are the same, making it costly and time-consuming for users to implement applications that allow people, products and machines to be aware of their proximity to each other. SpaceTrace’s low- power tags and trackers can send location data to the cloud from anywhere in the world. www.culvertengineering.com p Amarinth , the Suffolk-based manufacturer of centrifugal pumps has completed certification to ISO 80079/34, taking it a step closer to becoming the world’s first manufacturer of IECEx-compliant mechanically sealed pumps. IECEx is the IEC System for Certification to Standards Relating to Equipment for Use in Explosive Atmospheres. Unlike Atex, all IECEx-certified equipment must be tested independently. Amarinth now has only two more standards to comply with – ISO 80079/36 and ISO 80079/37 – to reach its IECEx goal. MD Oliver Brigginshaw is confident of achieving these soon. p The AMR (autonomous mobile robot) market- leader Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR) has entered a strategic collaboration with the material-handling equipment manufacturer Logitrans to build autonomous pallet jacks. These will lift pallets directly from the ground safely, efficiently, and autonomously, and will combine MiR’s autonomous navigation and software capabilities with Logitrans electric pallet jacks. The jacks will supplement MiR’s heavy-payload mobile robots which pick up pallets only from special racks. Users are requesting AMRs that can pick up and deliver pallets from the ground level. www.mobile-industrial-robots.com www.logitrans.com p Mitsubishi Electric has developed seven new power semiconductor modules for compact, high-power inverters used in industrial machines, traction motors, DC power systems, and other high-current HV equipment. The two new HV IGBTs (up to 6kV) and five new HV diodes (up to 10kV) are up to 33% smaller than previous devices with similar current and voltage ratings. www.mitsubishielectric.com p The Canadian industrial vision specialist Lucid Vision Labs , has announced “next- generation” 3D time-of-flight cameras, said to produce “exceptional” 3D depth data with sub-millimetre precision from 1m away. The Helios2 sensor also has enhanced optics for better light collection and improved calibration for higher accuracy. The IP67- protected devices support GigE Vision PoE and use M12 connectors for cable lengths up to 100m. The cameras deliver 640 x 480 depth resolutions at working distances of up to 8.3m and at frame rates of 30 fps. www.thinklucid.com TECHNOLOGY BRIEFS THREE COMPANIES – the industrial communications specialist Moxa, the chip- maker Intel, and the German software developer, port industrial automation – have collaborated to develop and demonstrate a “game-changing” platform that they say is the first application-to-application use of time-sensitive networking (TSN). The platform combines Gigabit bandwidths, high performance, reliability and security, with the potential for wireless communications. The partners say their joint demonstration shows the maturity of TSN and its potential to expand from wired to wireless networks. Wireless TSN, they add, “will liberate standards-based, scalable, and highly flexible applications that are realising Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)”. The platform offers a unified, high- performance network infrastructure that allows different types of traffic to co-exist. The development integrates products that have been certified to CC-Link IE TSN, with Moxa TSN-enabled switches, and Intel’s 11th generation i7 processors and I120 TSN- enabled platforms. The application software is being developed by port, which has one of the first CC-Link IE TSN Class B-certified master stacks and supports Profinet-over-TSN through the first Profinet CC-D remote station. The platformwill be able to integrate devices and protocols such as CC-Link IE TSN, Profinet-over-TSN (Profinet CC-D), EtherCat- over-TSN and the upcoming OPC UA FX. There is also a neutral middleware that supports a variety of industrial protocols operating over TSN to deliver synchronous communications between sensors, PLCs and actuators. According to port’s chief technology officer, Marcus Tangermann: “With TSN, there is finally an Ethernet-based technology available that can connect all kinds of devices on the factory floor using standardised Ethernet TSN infrastructure devices, avoiding the need for proprietary systems. TSN infrastructure components have better knowledge about all data streams within the network, which allows sophisticated planning of network traffic.” “Moxa’s solution using TSN and real-time features on Intel architecture processors will enable the level of determinism required by intelligent industrial edge systems where data is extracted, analysed, and actions applied, in real time,”adds Sunita Shenoy, Intel’s senior director of industrial IoT platforms.“Using standard Ethernet-based solutions accelerates digital transformation to smart factories, thus lowering total costs of ownership.” “Working closely with Intel and port, we’ve achieved another milestone for advancing the development of TSN to the next stage as burgeoning consensus shows that TSN and wireless capabilities should combine to digest and react to data from multiple systems in real-time,” says Zico Lee, deputy general manager of Moxa Networking. TSN improves determinism and reliability in industrial Ethernet-based communications used for vertical applications. It can achieve accurate time synchronisation across networks as well as traffic prioritisation, allowing users to combine many types of traffic on one network with no loss of performance. It also supports time-critical, control-related tasks and improves the transparency of how information is processed to support quality and output. With the arrival of 5G and Wi-Fi 6/7 connections, deterministic communications can be expanded over wireless networks. Intel, Moxa and port join forces on wireless TSN over Ethernet Moxa, Intel and port are collaborating to advance deterministic network communications over standard Ethernet