Software plays key roles in modern automation systems. The industrial automation systems have wide areas of applications: assembly, packaging, printing, and manufacturing. An automation system is usually composed of many different kinds of components including controllers, motors and drives, and sensors, where, with the rapid advances of information technology, efficient software design is becoming increasingly important. Recently, with the global trends of cyber-physical systems (CPS) and industry 4.0, various research issues and business opportunities in automation are expected in, for example, open platform for automation, machine learning, and distributed real-time computing,

SS lab is collaborating with academia and industrial partners to enable IT-converged industrial automation. For a rapid prototyping and proof of concept implementation, we use various open-source software solutions. Beremiz in particular lays ground in most of our works. It is a free and open source IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for industrial automation. Conforming to the IEC 61131-3 standard, Beremiz supports major PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) programming languages, including FBD (Function Block Diagram), ST (Structured Text), LD (Ladder Diagram), IL (Instruction List), and SFC (Sequential Function Chart). Beremiz PLCopen editor has a built-in export filter that converts graphical languages to their equivalent textual form in ST. MatPLC then compiles the ST codes into ANSI C codes. Beremiz IDE runs in any of MS Windows, Linux, and Mac, and its runtime now supports Windows, Linux and Xenomai. For communication, Beremiz basically includes the extension for CANopen and CAN (CANfestival) and EtherCAT, a real-time industrial Ethernet can be supported using IgH EtherCAT Master.