Method and apparatus for partitioning industrial control data
AssigneeRockwell Automation Technologies, Inc.
InventorsScott A. Pierce, Anthony J. Diblasio
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An industrial controller includes a processing unit and a memory. The industrial controller is operable to communicate using an optimized connection packet including I/O data from a plurality of I/O modules arranged as an unstructured data block. The processing unit is operable to operate on the I/O data within the optimized connection packet to control a process. The memory is operable to store a plurality of cast tags. Each cast tag is associated with one of the I/O modules and provides a logical reference to a subset of the unformatted data block including at least a portion of the I/O data for the associated I/O module.
Claims18
An industrial control system, comprising:
- a plurality of I/O modules operable to interface with input devices and output devices on an industrial machine or process, the I/O modules communicating input I/O data representing the status of the input devices and output I/O data controlling the operation of the output devices;
- a scanner operable to exchange the I/O data with the I/O modules through a network, the scanner assembling the I/O data for a plurality of the I/O modules into a single optimized connection packet, wherein the I/O data for the plurality of I/O modules communicating with the scanner is arranged in a predetermined arrangement data block within the optimized connection packet, and wherein the I/O data is identified as to type and I/O module only by a relative location within the data block;
- and
- an industrial controller operable to exchange the optimized connection packet with the scanner, the industrial controller being further operable to store a control program including a plurality of cast tags, wherein each cast tag is referenced to a subset of the I/O data in the data block associated with a different single I/O module, and wherein each cast tag identifies a particular I/O module and includes a label for the data, a data type which is effective to characterize the I/O data for purposes of the executing the control program, and a reference to a location of the I/O data in the data block;
- wherein data for a particular I/O module may be accessed from the optimized connection packet by a programmatic reference of the cast tag at the industrial controller without communicating this information in the optimized connection packet.
An industrial controller operable to communicate using an optimized connection packet including all I/O data associated with all I/O modules associated with a single I/O network, wherein the I/O data is arranged as an unformatted concatenated data block, the industrial controller comprising:
- a processing unit operable to access the I/O data within the optimized connection packet to control a process through executing a stored control program;
- and
- a memory operable to store the control program including a plurality of cast tags, each cast tag being associated with I/O data for one of the I/O modules and providing a reference to a subset of the unformatted concatenated data block including at least a portion of the I/O data for the associated I/O module and imposing data types of the cast tag on the subset of the unformatted concatenated data block;
- wherein the cast tags are data objects in the object-oriented language accessible within the stored control program defining the subsets of data in the unformatted concatenated data block that are related to the respective I/O modules by identifying a relative location within the data block data for a particular I/O module, a label for the data and a data type of the data and wherein the cast tags provide access to the subsets of data for the control program;
- wherein data for a particular I/O module may be accessed from the optimized connection packet by a programmatic reference of the cast tag at the industrial controller without communicating this information in the optimized connection packet.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.