An open-source development environment for industrial automation with EtherCAT and PLCopen motion control

Standards conformance and integrated development are key features of modern automation systems. This paper introduces an integrated development environment (IDE) that enables high-speed EtherCAT communication and standardized motion programming. On the basis of our previous work, we extended and customized open-source software components to provide a completely open architecture IDE, that is compliant with the relevant industrial standards. The major components of our IDE are IEC 61131-3 and PLCopen TC6 compliant editor, EtherCAT communication support, and PLCopen TC2 compliant motion control library. Since the whole procedures from the project setup to run-time monitoring are highly automated, the presented IDE allows developers to integrate coordinated motion with control logics seamlessly and efficiently.