Control programming using Java

Networking and distributed applications have an increasing relevance in industrial automation as the horizontal and vertical integration of control systems progresses. In this context, object-oriented programming concepts and languages like Java become more and more interesting for all levels of automation. Within this article the state of the art in real-time Java and its applicability in the automation domain are discussed and an example for an implementation of a run-time environment utilizing the real-time specification for Java (RTSJ) will be introduced.