Introduction

The TC3 Robotics uniVAL PLC allows direct communication between the PLC and the robotics controller from Stäubli via a common interface. The robot's movements can be programmed directly in the PLC and compared with the robot's actual values in real-time. The TC3 Robotics uniVAL PLC combines PLC control and robotics on a single platform and enables programming from a single system without having to know a special robot programming language.

The communication takes place via EtherCAT, with TwinCAT and the robotics controller from Stäubli exchanging the data as master and slave, respectively.

TwinCAT sends the motion commands to the robot via EtherCAT. Thanks to this efficient communication, commands can be sent from the PLC to the robot at high speed. In addition, the PLC programmer has real-time access to the robot’s position data at all times. Other motion programs which are located in the robot controller's database can also be activated via this interface.