From Code Generator to Engineering Companion: A Plant-aware Agent for PLC Programming

Joschka Kersting, Gesa Benndorf
10/20/2026
cs.SEcs.AIcs.LG

No confident code implementation found for this paper.

Abstract

Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) coding remains a manual, IDE-centric task that demands constant context switching between documentation, project files, and code editors. Recent work has demonstrated that retrieval-augmented large language models can generate vendor-compliant Structured Text at high compilation rates \cite{pred}, yet these systems treat code generation as a one-shot pipeline: the engineer submits a query and receives code, with no persistent knowledge of the specific plant. We present a plant-aware conversational copilot that extends this paradigm in three directions: plant-specific context ingestion, a chat-first interaction model for explanation and debugging, and a graduated tool-access ladder from chat to deployment. The system is designed for real plant infrastructure and keeps the engineer in control of each step that produces real-world effects.

View on arXivView PDF

Code Implementations

No confident code match yet

We couldn't find an author-owned or strongly-evidenced community implementation for this paper. Any repos shown below are weak matches — verify before relying on them.

No code implementations found yet.

Know of an implementation? Let us know in the comments below!

Similar Papers

Context Branching for LLM Conversations: A Version Control Approach to Exploratory Programming

81% match2025

Can Developers Prompt? A Controlled Experiment for Code Documentation Generation

81% match2024

Bridging Code Semantic and LLMs: Semantic Chain-of-Thought Prompting for Code Generation

81% match2023

LMs: Understanding Code Syntax and Semantics for Code Analysis

81% match2023

Dynamic Code Orchestration: Harnessing the Power of Large Language Models for Adaptive Script Execution

81% match2024

Large Language Models Should Ask Clarifying Questions to Increase Confidence in Generated Code

81% match2023

Cite this paper

@article{kersting2026from,
  title  = {From Code Generator to Engineering Companion: A Plant-aware Agent for PLC Programming},
  author = {Joschka Kersting and Gesa Benndorf},
  year   = {2026},
  eprint = {2610.28160},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url    = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2610.28160v1}
}

Add a badge to your README

Shows whether official code is linked for this paper.

Code of Paper badge
[![Code of Paper](https://codeofpaper.com/badge/2610.28160.svg)](https://codeofpaper.com/paper/2610.28160)

Discussion