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Bosch Rexroth Reinvents Its Automation Approach

The automation supplier went back to the drawing board to create ctrlX Automation, a software-driven open automation platform that provides flexibility and scalability through app-based functionality.

Bosch Rexroth’s ctrlX Automation platform features open software architecture, a wide choice of programming language options, and app-based functionality.
Bosch Rexroth’s ctrlX Automation platform features open software architecture, a wide choice of programming language options, and app-based functionality.
Bosch Rexroth

Looking to reinvent your technology, it might make sense to ask what some of the key innovators in the world of technology might do. That’s exactly what Bosch Rexroth did with its latest control platform—reinventing automation rather than just reiterating existing technologies.

“We wanted to do something that would bring significant improvements for the automation market,” said Dave Cameron, director of sales for automation and electrification solutions at Bosch Rexroth. “So we asked, ‘What would automation look like if it were invented by Apple, Google, or another innovative company?’”

The answer involved starting over at the drawing board, which Cameron likens to carmaker Tesla. “They didn’t just take a combustion engine design of the automobile and create an electric vehicle,” he said. “They started with a new design.”

Introducing what it’s calling the ctrlX Automation platform, Bosch Rexroth has done away with traditional boundaries between machine control systems, IT and the Internet of Things (IoT). It’s a more flexible and scalable platform, providing both centralized and decentralized automation topologies with the help of a Linux real-time operating system, open standards, app programming capabilities, web-based engineering, and a comprehensive IoT connection.

Bosch Rexroth has a strong focus on primary and secondary packaging applications, and that will serve as a target market for the new automation platform. But it will serve a “vast market of applications,” Cameron said, including additive manufacturing and traditional machine tool operations. End users will be attracted by the space savings in the installation, including the reduction of cabinets required and the elimination of cooling in the cabinets, noted Bipin Sen, regional sales manager for Bosch Rexroth. From the OEM’s perspective, ctrlX Automation provides them the ability to develop their own applications and their own IP that can be embedded in drives. “It allows OEMs to develop machines that are cutting-edge and differentiates them from other OEMs,” he added.

Software-driven design

In the past, machine design was mainly about bringing together pieces and trying to optimize the results. But now we live in a world much more driven by software. “Machine design and engineering really means software development now,” Cameron said. “The ability to engineer faster is greatly based on software tools.”

The ctrlX Automation platform combines the latest engineering software technologies with all programmable logic controller (PLC) and motion tasks. Software functions are combinable in any number of ways with ready-made, customized and customizable apps—which could be created by Bosch Rexroth, its customers, or third-party suppliers in a variety of programming languages such as C++ or IEC 61131, script languages such as Python, or new graphical languages such as Blockly.

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