Versatile service for the protection of experimental areas at CERN

CERN hosts a number of other experimental areas with a rich research program ranging from fundamental physics to medical applications. The risk assessments have shown a large palette of potential hazards (radiological, electrical, chemical, laser, etc.) that need to be properly mitigated in order to ensure the safety of personnel working inside these areas. A Personnel Protection System, typically, accomplishes this goal by implementing a certain number of heterogeneous functionalities as interlocks of critical elements, management of a local HMI, data monitoring and interfacing with RFID badge readers. Given those requirements, reducing system complexity and costs are key parameters to be optimized in the solution. This paper is aimed at summarizing the findings, in terms of costs, complexity and maintenance reduction, offered by a technology from National Instruments® based on cRIO controllers and a new series of SIL-3 certified safety I/O modules. A use case based on a service for the protection of Class 4 laser laboratories will be described in detail.