Sercos is designed to provide hard real-time, high performance communications between industrial motion controls and digital servo drives.

Until the early 1980s the majority of servo drive systems used to control motion in industrial machinery were based upon analog electronics.

The membership of the VDW (German Machine Tool Builders' Association) became concerned with the implications of this trend.

In response to that, in 1987 the VDW formed a joint working group with the ZVEI (German Electrical and Electronics Industry Association) to develop an open interface specification appropriate for digital-drive systems.

[2] After the release of the original standard, original working group member companies including ABB, AEG, AMK, Robert Bosch, Indramat, and Siemens founded the "Interest Group Sercos" to steward the standard.

[3] Over the history of Sercos, its capabilities have been enhanced to the point where today it is not only used for motion control systems, but as a universal automation bus.

supports a Conformance Laboratory at the University of Stuttgart's Institute for Control Engineering of Machine Tools and Manufacturing Units (ISW).