Safety Programming Made Agile and Transparent with B&R’s Safety+

B&R recently announced its latest Safety+ solution to redefine how safety functions are programmed. By giving engineers access to advanced programming methods and standard productivity tools, the new Safety+ solution adopts an open approach and overcomes barriers in the functional safety space. The Product Manager for Safety at B&R, Franz Kaufleitner, emphasized that developing safety applications can be done more flexibly and efficiently. The new Safety+ solution lets customers use advanced methods and tools from familiar standard programming.

Safety+ enables developers to create customized safety programs with standard productivity tools. Image used courtesy of B&R

Key Features and Benefits of the Safety+

The new Safety+ features transparency and agility in safety programming, being the first to offer an open programming framework. Engineers can easily adapt safety functions to the changing requirements without compromising quality by tracking real-time changes. This, together with advanced techniques and tools used in standard software developments, enables fast delivery of results and notably improves productivity.

An innovative data architecture featured in the Safety+ solution simplifies data storage in accessible formats like JSON and XML. In these formats, the source files are stored in a text-based open code repository. The program code’s integrity is secured via a digital footprint while documenting every change. Detailed metadata provides transparency by taking note of any changes made, who made the changes, and when the alterations were made. For ease of refining and updating safety functions, the new Safety+ solution offers more detailed tracking capabilities, allowing users to monitor specific function blocks and parameter set levels within a safety application.

In Kaufleitner’s estimation, the Safety+ solution seamlessly integrates with widely used third-party tools and development platforms like GitHub and Jenkins, enabling effective collaboration and exchange among engineers and the developer community. A command line interface further streamlines coding workflow, allowing developers to automate the build process and ensure continuous integration by directly working with the software in headless mode.

When it comes to programming, the Safety+ solution eliminates the restrictions of proprietary systems by offering more freedom in data types and programming languages. The supported programming languages include ladder diagrams, function blocks, and structured texts. The new solution also supports advanced data structures like arrays, structs, and real data types.

The built-in features of Safety+ streamline the creation of advanced data structures and improve workflows for programmers. Image used courtesy of B&R

The Future of Functional Safety

Functional safety was previously hampered by encrypted proprietary file systems that prevented unauthorized changes, affecting flexibility and making the use of productivity-enhancing tools difficult. Therefore, to cater to the changes in user requirements, the Safety+ solution's agility and open ecosystem stand in to bridge the gap and maintain high safety compliance standards.

As Kaufleitner put it, Safety+ represents a small revolution in text-based safety function programming, which is no exaggeration. B&R's Safety+ solution offers developers the freedom to create safety solutions that are innovative and efficient.