Remote control of CAN-based industrial equipment using Internet technologies

The paper presents different methods for observing, monitoring, parameterising and directly controlling CAN-based automation equipment using Internet technologies. Examples that are described are: a commercial industrial robot, a cartesian handling system, a workpiece separation unit and other CAN devices. Furthermore generic interfaces are presented to access CAN systems via the internet on CAN layer 2 and to access CANopen modules using the CANopen object dictionary / electronic data sheet. Since industrial equipment tend to be located behind firewalls, a method was developed and is described to get access to CAN even through firewalls and proxies. For demonstration purposes the described systems are online 7 days / 24 hours and can be accessed by everyone from all over the world.