Lean and Fast Fieldbus based Safety Functionality for Drives in Automation

Activating automation drive internal Safe Torque Off (STO) via a safety-related fieldbus requires from most product vendors additional safety hardware, e.g. a safety option card. The new ap-proach introduces a new lean and cost efficient technique for a safety-related fieldbus based STO. The method is based on standard fieldbuses with black-channel safety communica-tion (e.g. PROFIsafe or Safety over EtherCAT) and simple state machines - based on FPGA or ASIC technology - to process the safety protocol in a diversified way.