With FailSafe over EtherCAT (FSoE) it is possible to integrate safety technology directly into the EtherCAT topology. Devices can be combined into groups and master slave relationships can be established between logic slaves and IO slaves. These communicate within the EtherCAT system.

With this concept, safety controllers can be integrated into an EtherCAT topology at low cost without having to operate additional interfaces.

The use of TwinSafe components from Beckhoff is also possible with the EtherCAT Acquisition Library. For this purpose, the topology and the relationships between the safety components and their logic are configured in TwinCAT. The EtherCAT system can then be operated with the ENI file created in TwinCAT.