Adept Technology Inc. has introduced a family of distributed motion and vision controllers based on an architecture that reduces the space and cabling required by 70% and improves performance.
The first release will be SmartController CS, which comes configured for standard applications that don't need vision or conveyor belt tracking. Next will be SmartController CX, which is internally expandable and includes support for AdeptVision AVI and conveyor belt tracking.
The new SmartControllers support communication interfaces including DeviceNet, 100 BaseT, Fast Ethernet, RS-232/485, and IEEE 1394, also known as FireWire. The SmartController's network control architecture takes advantage of Adept's SmartAmp technology, which places some of the servo code in the SmartAmp.