Speech recognition capabilities, like Siri, have been popular in consumer applications for years. Beckhoff is now bringing this technology to industrial automation through the use of Amazon’s Polly for online use and Microsoft’s Cortana for offline applications. In this demo from Hannover Messe 2019, Sven Goldstein, Beckhoff’s TwinCat product manager, shows how the technology can be used to deliver basic instructions to a controller, such as to increase or decrease motor speed. It also allows for a machine to provide audio feedback to an operator. Goldstein says this capability can be helpful when workers are wearing gloves or otherwise cannot access the HMI to change operating parameters.
