IEC 61131-3 conform languages might become a bridge between academic development and industrial applications

Academia discovers industrial Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) for research and development. PLCs have the advantage that they are widely used in industries and generally accepted. Algorithms and applications running on such systems are becoming interesting for industries. To programme PLCs, mostly the PLC vendors and manufacturers provide at least one of the IEC 61131-3 languages to do so. Enhanced algorithms developed in academia might not be easily redeveloped in one of the IEC languages; it is time consuming and fault prone. The conversion of such algorithms in either function-blocks or directly into an IEC 61131-3 language is becoming very attractive. This paper provides an intensive survey of interesting applications and introduces tools developed within the department. Key-Words: IEC-61131-3, Structured Text, Function Block Diagram