In the mobile machinery sector, advanced lifting solutions are set to play a significant role in the coming decades in a range of industries from construction to transport and logistics, municipal, or agriculture. The use of automation and new technologies like AI and machine learning in lifting machinery will enable new ways of working, planning, and managing operations and allow companies to enhance safety, improve efficiency, and reduce operational costs.
A long-time TTControl customer in this field is PALFINGER, an international technology and mechanical engineering company from Austria and the world's leading producer and provider of innovative crane and lifting solutions for various industries, including construction, transportation, and logistics. We spoke to Andreas Hille, Senior Vice President Product Line Management & Engineering, PALFINGER, about the market and the collaboration with TTControl.
Safety controllers for the “brain of the crane”
PALFINGER had been working with HYDAC International in the field of hydraulics and sensors for a long time and decided that TTControl, the joint venture of TTTech and HYDAC International in the mobile machinery sector, could make a good strategic partner as well.
The collaboration with TTControl began in 2011 with the development of a customized control unit for small loader cranes – the PALTRONIC 40. As the “brain of the crane” PALTRONIC is the center for controlling and monitoring all functions and thus needs to operate with maximum reliability and safety. for this project, PALFINGER used TTControl’s TTC 590 and TTC 94 electronic control units (ECUs). This first successful project led to further collaboration which resulted in the modular high-end electronic control solution TTC 590 being integrated into the new PALTRONIC 180 control system.
More than ten years on, TTControl and PALFINGER are still working together successfully. Three years ago, they partnered with other industry leaders to establish the Autonomous Operation Cluster (AOC) and share cross-market knowledge and development resources to accelerate the automation of road construction equipment and specialized vehicles.
Andreas Hille speaks highly of TTControl as a partner: “TTControl is a reliable, innovative company with many years of experience in the application of control systems for mobile machinery, expertise regarding functional safety, and good collaboration skills. And it has a strong strategic focus on beyond state-of-the-art system solutions for future applications.”
Future-proof solutions are key in an increasingly complex and interconnected world. This includes meeting functional safety, user safety, as well as cybersecurity requirements, and a modular, flexible offering that can be adapted to a wide range of industries and customer use cases.
According to Andreas Hille, autonomous mobility and functionality will become more important in the future and will place new demands on the industry, “As we can see in the automotive industry, the effort required to establish safe, autonomous functionality is not manageable for an individual company. In the future, even larger platforms and collaboration will be needed to establish autonomous systems in the off-highway industry. From a control system and technology view, it will all be moving toward an aligned, modular control system in combination of functional safety units and a discrete high-performing computing unit.”
This is where TTControl supports PALFINGER by providing off-the-shelf safety controllers and general purpose controllers that ensure reliability and safety when lifting material or people. TTControl’s ECUs are robust, flexible, and cost-efficient, ready to be integrated directly into customer applications without any dedicated hardware development, as well as modular to ensure scalability for future-proof applications.
With increasing automation and connectivity, new solutions will be necessary to meet the demands of operators and manufacturers. Andreas Hille mentions: “Higher demands on user experience, such as partial autonomous operation, connectivity, and artificial intelligence will increase the complexity of our control systems. At the same time, functional and user safety requirements must be met. This increases system and development costs. The challenge will be to define business cases and value-added applications that customers are willing to pay for.”
TTControl can also help customers to address these requirements by providing advanced human-machine interfaces (HMIs) and displays, telematics solutions and cloud services, or FusionAI, a multi-screen and multi-interface computing platform that supports the shift from hardware- to software-defined machinery.
TTControl ECUs for advanced lifting solutions
PALFINGER uses families from TTControl’s mid-size (TTC 50) and high-end (TTC 500) ECU portfolio that can be used for controlling base vehicle functionalities as well as work functions:
Freely programmable control units for cost-effective applications
The TTC 50 family, which includes the TTC 94, offers robustness and high-performance for applications operating under harsh environmental conditions, e.g. cranes on construction sites. An automotive-style housing protects the electronic circuits against humidity, vibration, temperature changes, and mechanical load. Depending on the use case, either a singular ECU can be used, or several ECUs can be connected in a CAN®-based network. For customer-specific applications, the TTC 50 familiy can be programmed using C or CODESYS ®.
Powerful, freely programmable safety controllers for high-end applications
The TTC 500 family, which includes the TTC 590, was designed for high-end applications found for example in the construction and agricultural sectors. The ECUs are protected by an automotive-style, compact housing and are highly configurable, with a powerful CPU. In addition, they fulfil safety requirements up to SIL 2 (EN 61508) / PL d (EN ISO 13849), AgPL d (ISO 25119)*, ASIL C (ISO 26262)*. Programming is possible in C or CODESYS®.
* Available only for C-programming.
TTControl’s cooperation with PALFINGER highlights our commitment to strong, long-term partnerships and providing support throughout the product lifecycle. We learn a lot from our customers and their applications and continuously improve our products. Cybersecurity also plays an important role at TTControl and we focus on ensuring safety and security on company level as well as on product level.
Check out the full interview on TTTech’s website as part of the #jointimpact initiative.
Find out more:
- Application Development Center: Contact us for dedicated software applications for your mobile machinery and support throughout the entire machine development lifecycle.
- TTControl’s solutions for material handling
- Off-highway industry leaders partner on autonomy
- #jointimpact at TTTech: Part of the IMPACT25 initiative started for TTTech’s 25th anniversary, #jointimpact showcases high-level perspectives on business, technology, and industry from customers and partners in a wide range of industries.
