Joining the Industry 4.0 dots: The IO-Link encoder

摘要

IO-Link is a breakthrough technology that has achieved rapid and widespread acceptance over the past five years and helped 'join the dots' for many industrial processes working towards Industry 4.0. IO-Link has delivered a standard open communications gateway that enables a common architecture to be used for sensors and actuators of ail types in a machine. It means they can cooperate at the lowest level of the automation hierarchy, then link, through an IO-Link Master, to transmit data, often with added value, via the factory ethernet network to a controller, such as a PLC.