Case Study: Festo achieves automated PLC implementation and an award‑winning Bionic Handling Assistant with MathWorks (Simulink & Simulink PLC Coder)

Festo Develops Innovative Robotic Arm Using Model-Based Design

Festo developed the Bionic Handling Assistant, a lightweight, elephant‑trunk–inspired pneumatic robotic arm with 11 degrees of freedom and 12 pressure and position controllers, and faced the challenge of designing nonlinear, vibration‑damped control that could run safely on PLC hardware. To meet this challenge Festo turned to MathWorks tools—MATLAB, Simulink, Simulink Coder and Simulink PLC Coder—for model‑based design and implementation.

Using MathWorks’ Simulink and Simulink PLC Coder, Festo modeled and simulated plant and controller dynamics, performed system identification in MATLAB, generated C and IEC 61131 structured‑text code, and deployed the controller to a Festo CMXR‑C2 PLC via CoDeSys for verification and iteration. The MathWorks workflow automated a previously intractable PLC implementation (generated structured text in minutes), enabled deployment on standard PLC hardware, helped Festo win the €250,000 Deutscher Zukunftspreis and other innovation awards, and opened new low‑volume business opportunities.

Festo

Rüdiger Neumann

Head of the Research Department