Patent ID: 8125109

Claim:
Modular safety switching system comprising a plurality of output modules, a bus and a central control unit connected to all output modules by the bus, each output module being configured to receive input data of a monitoring sensor configured to determine sizes of detected objects, locations of the objects, and/or movements of the objects as time-dependent signal patterns, each output module having at least one output for an actuator, the central control unit being configured to receive at least a portion of the input data and to evaluate the input data, for determining output data for the outputs, wherein each output module includes its own output module control unit for evaluating the input data in collaboration with the central control unit for determining the output data for the outputs, wherein the output module control units and the central control unit are configured to distribute evaluation tasks of the input data to the central control unit and to the output module control units for parallel processing, wherein the distribution of the evaluation tasks comprises directly assigning at least some of the evaluation tasks to at least some of the output modules in such a way as to provide shortened data paths.