Remotely operated vehicles get help from SoftPLC
Challenge
The control system outlined here concerns an underwater remotely operated vehicle (ROV). The offshore Oil and Gas industry has become increasingly dependent on ROVs as the global trend in deep water sea bed installations increases. The system comprises of three control units.
Application Solution
The PLC units are dedicated to updating local data input and transferring this to the remote unit where it is regarded as data to be output. Thus, at any instant, each controller has global data that ‘mirrors’ the last state of the controllers’ I/O. The PLCs are comprised of embedded-PC and I/O modules using the industrial computer PC/104 format and ISA bus standard. The identical surface and subsea controller 80486 DX2/66 processors run a 32bit real- time, multitasking kernel operating system SoftPLC. This operating system, once loaded into RAM, has complete control of the CPU at all times.
Benefit
Redundant path switching for the communications loops to the PLC has been incorporated so, if the primary data path fails, a back up fibre or copper pair can be used to communicate with the other control unit.
This application success story is from SoftPLC
Tri-Phase Automation is a SoftPLC distributor in Wisconsin.
Contact Tri-Phase Sales or Get A Quote