Emerging the real-time performance for the single axis slave controller in the decentralised network

In the era of the fourth industrial revolution, many certain technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) or Internet of Service (IoS) have been implemented for the improvement of current system. However, most of them did not ensure the real-time performance which is inevitable for modern motion systems. The implementation of Ethernet-based protocol, rapid data exchange and synchronised transmission are proper for the novelties of slave controller. An integration of the decentralised network into the motion control system is introduced firstly. To demonstrate the conceptual design, some descriptions of motivations and related definitions are explained. Then, the structure of hardware components and internal connections are mentioned. Later, the software architecture including the data exchange and flowchart of motion program, is described in detail. To verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach, some technical analysis of timing synchronisation and tracking deviation between our method and the others are carried out. In addition, several practical validations are conducted in the same conditions. The contributions of the authors are (i) to firstly present the concept of controller design using the real-time technology, (ii) to illuminate both hardware design and software design of the proposed approach and (iii) to analyse the superior performance in delay time between our method and the others as well as validate the real-world results to prove the effectiveness and feasibility. From the authors’ achievement, it is observed that these results can be broadly purposeful to the sustainable development of Industry 4.0.