We are currently working on a project involving ROS2 Humble (C++) and need to establish communication with a Siemens PLC. We are evaluating two commonly used industrial communication protocols:
Modbus TCP
OPC UA
Our goal is to build a robust and future-ready integration between the ROS2 environment and industrial PLCs, especially in the context of scalable systems and Industry 4.0 readiness.
Which protocol do you recommend for integrating ROS2 Humble (C++) with Siemens PLCs?
Has anyone here implemented either protocol in real-world industrial setups?
Are there any reliable and maintained C++ libraries or ROS2 packages (client/server) that you’d recommend for either Modbus TCP or OPC UA?
It is worth mentioning that during ROSCon 2024, Siemens presented their developments toward the integration of ROS 2 and SIMATIC. I only got one photo of their stand:
Hi @Apurva_Nikhare
Welcome to discourse! And thank you all for your interest in this topic.
I like to take the opportunity to showcase you what we have crafted at the Siemens HQ in Germany. This technology will be hopefully made available to the broad public in the following weeks after easter. (End of April - May 2025).
For the time being, we choose a different communication protocol: the SIEMENS RIB = Realtime Information Backbone; meaning shared-memory. This means: up to 1 kHz speed and a proper amount of bandwidth. Configuring of this interface is 100% done by our generator where you get a complete tailor-made C++ node and corresponding PLC blocks as output.
To learn more about our approach, I encourage you to watch one of our 2 ROSCon talks.
First the more recent talk from me regarding some rough strategy for our Siemens contributions regarding ROS and a user story about why one might want to connect to a Siemens PLC from ROS:
And second, our combined talk with our pilot customer BMW on the global ROSCon stage in Odense (which seems to be the banner slide of the ROSCon24 Global Vimeo ):
Thank you so much for the detailed response and for sharing the insights from ROSCon — I really appreciate the direction and clarity!
The Siemens RIB (Realtime Information Backbone) approach sounds very promising, especially with its high-speed, shared-memory communication and automatic code generation. That level of performance and integration would definitely simplify the complexity of bridging PLCs with ROS2 in industrial environments.
I’m particularly interested in learning more about how we could try out or evaluate this integration. Since our use case is very much aligned with scalable Industry 4.0 systems, this solution seems like a great fit.
I’ll connect with you on LinkedIn as suggested to follow up directly and learn about any potential early access or technical documentation. Also looking forward to the official release of this technology post-Easter.
):
