The EtherCat Technology Group (ETG) is developing a safety drive profile that will allow the safety functions of EtherCat drives with CANopen or Sercos drive profiles to be configured and used in a “manufacturer-independent” way.

The profile will be based on the IEC 61800-5-2 standard which defines safety-relevant functions such as Safe Torque Off (STO), Safe Limited Speed and Safe Stop 2. With these features, dangerous movements at startup or during manual interaction with a machine can be avoided or limited in a safe manner.

The ETG intends to make the safety drive profile available to other interested organisations. By design, the profile is independent of the safety bus system being used.

♦  Omron has announced that it has adopted EtherCat as its next motion bus, and plans to develop EtherCat-based servomotors, inverters and motion controllers by mid-2009. Omron will also push for the adoption of EtherCat as a Japanese national standard and establish an EtherCat conformance and interoperability test lab in Japan. Initially, the company will target its EtherCat-based products at European customers and at Japanese OEMs exporting to Europe.