B&R has joined the OPC UA TSN testbed of Chinese network equipment vendor Huawei. The Austrian au-tomation specialist is now participating in all three of the world's most significant platforms for practical testing of the new communication technology. The two other testbeds are those organized by the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) in the USA and Labs Network Industrie 4.0 (LNI) in Europe.
"Huawei's testbed gives us the opportunity to advance the standardization of OPC UA TSN in Asia," ex-plained B&R Marketing Manager Stefan Schönegger during the presentation of the testbed at the Hannover Messe. "In doing so, we're making another important contribution toward globally harmonized industrial communication."
From the sensor to the cloud
Huawei's testbed will feature an OPC UA TSN network simulating all aspects of smart factory communication – from individual sensors to the ERP system and on into the cloud. Data will be transmitted exclusively via OPC UA TSN – regardless of whether it is real-time motion control data or aggregated performance metrics for executive management. There is no need for communication interfaces of any kind.
