Software & Middleware

Fieldbus

A fieldbus is an industrial digital communication network that connects controllers to sensors, drives, and actuators over a shared bus, replacing point-to-point analog wiring. Common variants in robotics include EtherCAT, CANopen, PROFINET, and EtherNet/IP, which differ in topology, determinism, and cycle rates. Real-time Ethernet fieldbuses like EtherCAT achieve sub-millisecond, low-jitter cycles suitable for closing torque loops across dozens of joint drives.

Why it matters for physical AI

High-rate, deterministic buses are what allow a learned policy running on a compute module to command whole-body torque targets reliably; bus jitter and latency place hard limits on achievable control bandwidth.