2014年12月23日 星期二

The Future Blueprint for Public Transportation

Public Transportation

Bus application

Acrosser’s in-vehicle computer is capable of multitasking during the drive, enabling the realization of numerous advanced commercial applications. The advance in public transportation technology greatly benefits both passengers and carriers.

For example, the installed counter collects and sends passenger information to the data center, enabling carriers to determine suitable advertisements for passengers and increase potential revenue. In the safety aspect, the GPS can provide instant vehicle location, and remind drivers to stay cautious in certain traffic congestion areas. Surveillance centers may also monitor drivers and passengers instantly via the IP camera, ensuring a safer transportation environment. In addition, the connected Wi-Fi module receives signals coming from the bus stop to provide an accurate arrival information display to waiting passengers.

2014年12月15日 星期一

Team Up AR-B8172 with Your CNC Machine


ACROSSER Technology, a world-leading industrial computer manufacturer, introduces its ISA board,AR-B8172, which targets the value-based CNC machining and automation industry. As industrial automation techniques advance, the original manufacturing facilities are being phased out and be replaced with the new ones. But for factory owners with constrained budgets, finding a reliable ISA board supplier for their vintage CNC machines is a challenge. Acrosser’s fanless AR-B8172 ISA board offers accurate respond to your computer numeric control machine, and can overcome the heat dissipation difficulties encountered in factories. Customers can also purchase chassis, integrating theISA board to the machine all at once.
ISA boards are commonly used in industrial automation. They connect the CPU, motion controller cards, and other I/O interfaces. CNC machining and electrical discharge machining are perfect examples of ISA board applications.
Stability and cost-efficiency are two benefits of ISA boards. But Acrosser’s AR-B8172 offers even more features for your CNC machine, including:
1. Fanless design
2. Support for PC/104 interfaces
3. Support for multi-input devices
4. Durability, stability, and ease of integration
5. SRAM for data storage

And last but not least, Acrosser’s field application engineering team provides advanced services using their in-depth technical service and knowledge. It is Acrosser’s quality products and attentive service that makes your manufacturing goods unstoppable and profitable!


2014年12月8日 星期一

Flying Inventory Assistants Are a Good Use for Drones


It’s starting to seem like “throw a drone at it” is the solution that everyone wants to somehow solve every single problem everywhere, ever. And in most cases, it’s not going to work anytime soon, for reasons that we continue to belabor. This is not to say that drones aren’t valuable tools that can solve many network hardware problems: the key is to find a problem that needs a drone, as opposed to having a drone and then desperately looking for some problem for it to solve. The Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics, in Dortmund, Germany, may have found one of these problems: taking inventory in a warehouse. To do this efficiently, you need a mobile antenna that can navigate in three dimensions, and autonomous flying robots certainly fit the bill. Inventory is awful. I say this from experience, having made the mistake of accepting a department store inventory job for a few weeks in high school. Taking inventory in a store or warehouse involves wandering around and recording the location of every single item, using an RFID antenna or optical scanner. Did I mention that doing this by hand is awful? Because it’s awful.

One option to make inventory less painful is to deploy an infrastructure of networking appliance with built-in RFID readers, such that the shelf can tell what’s being stored on it. (Another, even better option is doing what Kiva Systems, now owned by Amazon, does: its inventory system keeps track of both the networking appliance and contents of every bin in the warehouse, so when you need to retrieve or restock something, you just send robots do get those bins for you.) This can work very well, but it’s expensive and hard to scale. Fraunhofer’s idea is to forget about the fancy shelves and instead replace what is usually a small army of inventorying humans with a small fleet of autonomous, inventorying drones that use RFID antennas or cameras to identify the location of items.

Drones are a good idea for inventory management for several reasons. First, they’ll be operating in a semi-structured (or entirely structured) environment. If they’re in a retail store, the environment is probably considered semi-structured, since humans can be kept out of the area while the robots do their work and the environment is generally static and well-defined. A warehouse might be a structured environment, since it can be completely restricted and mapped in advance with very little risk of change.

Also, an network hardware inventory drone can have an immediate and significant benefit on the inventory task in a way that would be hard to do otherwise. The reason a drone is so potentially useful is that warehouses maximize space utilization by stacking inventory as high as possible. A human would need a ladder just to read any identifying information, but for a drone, the height above the ground doesn’t matter all that much, especially if it’s equipped with a long-range RFID reader.

Fraunhofer’s InventAIRy Project (nice, right?) is developing “autonomous flying robots that are capable of independently navigating and conducting inventory.” The drones won’t be relying on an external navigations systems: it’ll all be onboard, using ultrasound sensors, 3D cameras, and laser scanners to perform continuous  simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). By mid-2015, Fraunhofer’s prototype system should be operating with partial autonomy, navigation around shelving and avoiding other obstacles. The next step will be to add RFID antennas, database integration, and (most challenging) an effective path-planning algorithm that allows the robot to reliably and efficiently catalog the objects in an arbitrary space.

We’re more optimistic about the networking appliance useful potential of InventAIRy than we are about most of the drone-related ideas that we come across, but as with anything related to robots, there’s a huge step between good idea and good execution. We’ll keep you updated.

refer to:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/aerial-robots/flying-inventory-assistants-are-a-good-use-for-drones

2014年12月2日 星期二

The Internet of Things Gets a New OS


British processor powerhouse ARM Holdings, said last week that it intends to launch a new, low-power operating networking appliance system that will manage web-connected devices and appliances using chips based on the company’s 32-bit Cortex-M microcontrollers.

The operating system, called mbed OS, is meant to resolve productivity problems that arise from fragmentation—where different devices in the so-called “Internet of things” (IoT) market run on a hodgepodge of different protocols. ARM is looking to consolidate those devices under a single software layer that's simple, secure, and free for all manufacturers to use.

“Instead of having large teams spending years designing a product,” rackmount vice president of research and development Kriztian Flautner told the BBC, “we'd like to turn that into months, so that you can take the [hardware] components, assemble the right ones, connect the device and focus on the problem you are solving and not the means to getting there."

In the last few years, rackmount has made a push networking appliance to develop more technologies designed for firewall IoT products. In a Pew survey this past spring, 83 percent of respondents thought the future of IoT would help improve their lives. Gartner, a tech research firm, recently predicted that by 2020 there will be 26 billion Internet-connected devices, an almost 30-fold increase from 2009.

However, this is the first operating system ARM has ever developed.

The mbed OS supports several standards of connectivity, including Wi-Fi, Bluethooth Smart, Thread, and a sub-6-gigahertz version of 6LoWPAN. It also supports many cellular standards, including 3G and LTE. At the same time, ARM is launching mbed server software, which the company says will allow users to gather and analyze data collected from IoT devices.

The OS was designed with power efficiency and battery life in mind. ARM claims it will only take up 256 kilobytes of memory, compared to the several gigabytes worth of storage needed for a smartphone OS. The company hopes developers will use mbed to create devices with battery lives measured in years.

Parts of the OS will be open source, though ARM says it wants to retain control of other parts to ensure mbed remains unfragmented. A recent EETimes study reports that in-house and custom designed systems for IoT devices are on the decline. Open source code already runs in 36 percent of embedded operating systems and is projected to keep rising, with Android and FreeRTOS leading networking appliance the pack. ARM seems to be trying to balance the advantages of development flexibility with proprietary control, but it remains to be seen how well that rackmount plays out.

Chris Rommel from the VDC Research group also told the BBC that while firewall believed most companies would welcome this news, it was unlikely the mbed OS would find its way into all IoT devices. "There will likely never be any one operating system—or even two or three—that can satisfy the broad ranges of needs of all the various devices that compose the Internet of things. They are just too different."

Already there are some big networking appliance appliance makers who are sure to resist the mbed OS. GE employs the software Predix in almost all its IoT products, and Samsung is heavily invested into using firewall Tizen for its family of IoT devices. Nest Labs's products run on a proprietary software based on Linux, though that's likely to shift to Android soon due to company's acquisition by Google.

However, that hasn't squelched enthusiasm from other companies yet. ARM will release the OS to hardware manufacturers and other developers before the end of the year, and says 25 companies have already signed up, including Ericsson, Freescale, IBM, NXP, and Zebra. The first networking appliance devices to use mbed OS are expected to arrive in 2015.

refer to: 
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/embedded-systems/the-internet-of-things-gets-a-new-os

2014年11月25日 星期二

Build Your UTM with Acrosser’s Network Appliance

UTM

ACROSSER Technology, a world-leading network communication designer and manufacturer, has released a video introducing its latest network appliance product line. The x86-based Network Platform enables network security appliance providers to develop its UTM devices in a unified structure.

In the video, Acrosser elaborates the 6 basic functions that an UTM device embodies: anti-virus, anti-spam, fire wall, intrusion detection, VPN and web filtering. These applications provide immediate protection for business owners from external Web attacks, keeping your network safe and clear. Connected with integrated networking software, Acrosser’s network appliance can perform advanced network management functions such as remote visibility control and bandwidth management.

Currently ACROSSER offers micro box and 1U rackmount for system integrators.  To learn more about our networking products, please visit our website for detailed information.

2014年11月17日 星期一

Create a “Wheel of Excuses” With BASIC and the New Raspberry Pi single board computer

Many years ago in the offices here at IEEE Spectrum, we had a “Wheel of Excuses” pinned to the outside wall of a embedded computer cubicle. So I turned to the US $35 Raspberry Pi single board computer, which had the final release of its first generation in July—the Model B+. Among other changes, the Model B+ has two more USB ports than the Model B along with an expanded general-purpose input/output (GPIO) connector, and it relies more heavily on HDMI for video output.

photo of Model B+ RaspberryPi
The Model B+ Raspberry Pi has an upgraded version of the I/O hardware in the Model B. RasPiO breakout board Using a RasPiO breakout board, I connected a button to the 40-pin GPIO header. screenshot of presented excuse Button presses generate excuses, which appear on a monitor attached via an HDMI cable. Old-school BBC Micro users will note my use of text mode 7, which supports Teletext commands for things like displaying double-height characters.

The Pi was first released in 2012 as a “spiritual successor” to the BBC Microcomputer System, which was created by Acorn single board computer in 1981 for Britain’s national Computer Literacy Project. The naming scheme for Pi models echoes that of the BBC Micro series, and like the original BBC Micro, the Pi has rapidly spread beyond the classroom.

The links to the BBC Micro are more than just circumstantial. The Pi is built around an ARM chip (a Broadcom BCM2835), and while ARM currently dominates the world of smartphones and tablets, the architecture was originally developed to provide a high-performance embedded computer coprocessor for BBC Micros, and it later powered the Archimedes line of PCs. The embedded sbc Archimedes came with RISC OS, a graphical user interface–based operating system that has since been ported to the Pi.

I first used Acorn’s dialect of BASIC way back in the day on a BBC Micro. One of the nice things about it was that it let you mix BASIC commands with assembly code for the BBC Micro’s 6502 processor. I was pleased to discover that RISC OS has retained a great deal of compatibility with the systems it grew out of, right back to that original dialect.

RISC OS’s version of embedded sbc BASIC—version VI—is, of course, greatly expanded compared with its 8-bit ancestor: As I said when I first tried it out, “it’s like meeting someone you palled around with in high school, and now they own a business and have two kids.” But it still includes an in-line assembler for combining machine code subroutines—now ARM code, of course—with BASIC. The single board computer integration allows for streamlined passing of variables back and forth between a BASIC program and machine code—for example, a set of BASIC integer variables, A% through H%, are automatically copied into the first eight embedded computer registers of the ARM chip when a subroutine is called.

This integration let me quickly write the spinning wheel animation and display code in BASIC, reaching back across the years to cobble together commands to draw colored segments of a circle and store the text of excuses using “data” and “read” commands. (When I started programming, BASIC embedded computer code would have been too slow for the wheel’s animation, but 30 years of Moore’s Law has solved that problem.) I needed to dip into assembly only in order to read the state of a button connected to the GPIO hardware. The button triggers the animation and has the program select and display an excuse.

I wired the button to the Pi’s GPIO port using a $10 RasPiO Breakout Pro, which provides basic protection against miswiring. (Unlike the more robust Arduino, which can handle enough current to drive a servo, the Pi’s GPIO can be damaged if connected to circuits that expose it to more than a few milliamperes or exceed 3.3 volts.) The Breakout Pro is designed for the GPIO on earlier Pi models, but the B+’s expanded port keeps the same pin configuration for the first 26 pins, so I was able to use the Breakout Pro and simply ignore the B+’s extra pins.

Reading the GPIO hardware was a good chance to get acquainted with the guts of a system using a reduced-instruction-set-computing architecture (so many registers!)—the last time I programmed on the metal was for the 6502. The Pi’s GPIO pins are mapped into the system’s memory as a series of 3-bit segments stored within 32-bit status words, so my machine code subroutine has to do some bit bashing to set a GPIO pin as an input. Then my subroutine reads the relevant GPIO status word and passes it back to BASIC. (For my code, I combined some snippets from Bruce Smith’s book Raspberry Pi Assembly Language RISC OS Beginners and a Raspberry Pi online forum.) My BASIC program then simply uses a loop that calls the subroutine and looks for any changes in the status word, indicating a button press.

With the embedded sbc software written, all that was left to do was build a case (from a few dollars’ worth of basswood) and hook the video output up to an old monitor. And voila! A new era of digitally driven excuses.

This article originally appeared in print as “Back to BASIC.”

refer to: 
http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/hands-on/create-a-wheel-of-excuses-with-basic-and-the-new-raspberry-pi

2014年11月10日 星期一

Vulnerable "Smart" Devices Make an Internet of Insecure Things among network appliance

According to recent research, 70 percent of Americans plan to own network appliance in the next five years, at least one smart appliance like an internet-connected refrigerator or thermostat. That's a skyrocketing adoption rate considering the number of smart appliance owners in the United States today is just four percent.

Yet backdoors and other insecure channels have been found in many such network appliance devices, opening them to possible hacks, botnets, and other cyber mischief. Although the widely touted hack of smart refrigerators earlier this year has since been debunked, there’s still no shortage of vulnerabilities in the emerging, so-called Internet of Things.

Enter, then, one of the world’s top research centers devoted to IT security, boasting 700 students in this growing field, the Horst Gortz Institute for IT Security at Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany. A research group at HGI, led by Christof Paar—professor and networking aplliance chair for embedded security at the Institute—has been discovering and helping manufacturers patch security holes in Internet-of-Things devices like appliances, cars, and the wireless routers they connect with.

Paar, who is also adjunct professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, says there are good engineering, technological, and even cultural reasons why security of the Internet of Things is a very hard problem.

For starters, it’s hard enough to get people to update their laptops and smartphones with the latest security patches. Imagine, then, a world where everything from your garage door opener, your coffeemaker, your eyeglasses, and even your running shoes have possible network appliance vulnerabilities. And the onus is entirely on you to download and install firmware updates—if there are any.

Furthermore, most Internet-connected “things” are net-savvier iterations of designs that have long pre-Internet legacies—legacies in which digital security had previously never been a major concern. But, Paar says, security is not just another new feature to be added onto an networking aplliance device. Internet security requires designers and engineers embrace a different culture altogether.

“There’s essentially no tolerance for error in security engineering.”
“There’s essentially no tolerance for error in security engineering,” Paar says. “If you write software, and the software is not quite optimum, you might be ten percent slower. You’re ten percent worse, but you still have pretty decent results. If you make one little mistake in security engineering, and the attacker gets in, the whole system collapses immediately. That’s kind of unique to security and crypto-security in general.”

Paar's research team, which published some of its latest findings in Internet-of-Things security this summer, spends a lot of time on physical and electrical engineering-based attacks on networking aplliance, also called side-channel attacks.

For instance, in 2013 Paar and six colleagues discovered rackmount in an Internet-connected digital lock made by Simons Voss. It involved a predictable, non-random number the lock’s algorithm used when challenging a user for the passcode. And the flaws in the security algorithm were discoverable, they found, via the wireless link between the lock and its remote control.

The way they handled the network box discovery was how they handle all security rackmount exploit discoveries at the Institute, Paar says. They first revealed the weakness to the manufacturers and offered to help patch the error before they publicized the exploit.

“They fixed the network box system, and the new generation of their rackmount is better,” he says. “They had homegrown crypto, which failed. And they had side-channel [security], which failed. So we had two or three vulnerabilities which we could exploit. And we could repair all of them."

Of the scores of papers and research reports the Embedded Security group publishes, Paar says one of the most often overlooked factors behind hacking is not technological vulnerabilities but economic ones.

“There’s a reason that a lot of this hacking happens in countries that are economically not that well off,” Paar says. “I think most people would way prefer having a good job in Silicon Valley or in a well-paying European company—rather than doing illegal stuff and trying to sell their services.”

But as long as there are hackers, whatever their circumstances and countries of origin, Paar says smart engineering and present-day technology can stop most of them in their network box tracks.

“Our premise is that it’s not that easy to do embedded security right, and that essentially has been confirmed,” he says. “There are very few systems we looked at that we couldn’t break. The shocking thing is the technology is there to get the security right. If you use state of the art technology, you can build systems that are very secure for practical rackmount applications.”

refer to:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/computing/networks/vulnerable-smart-devices-make-an-internet-of-insecure-things

2014年11月4日 星期二

Ian Wright is Turning Fedex and Garbage Trucks Into High Performance EVs

In Silicon Valley, the mark of a successful entrepreneur is not how good his first idea is; it’s how well he pivots when that first idea doesn’t work out.  San Jose Mercury News columnist Michelle Quinn recently wrote, “successful pivots are the stuff of tech industry lore, a critical gamble that resulted in great wealth.”

Which brings us to Ian Wright, founder of Wrightspeed. Wrightspeed, which now makes powertrains for trucks, just got a big order from FedEx; the company is comfortably funded, thriving, and hiring. But it nearly crashed and burned before making a pivot that I didn’t see coming — and neither did Wright.

I met Wright back in 2006. A vehicle pc engineer who had spent some time on the amateur auto racing circuit, Wright had been working on a plan for an optical switching company when neighbor Martin Eberhard told him about his new startup, Tesla Motors. Wright shelved his business plan and signed on as employee number one, eager for a chance to merge his two passions, electronics and cars. He worked on optimizing the Tesla One for energy efficiency, but became fascinated with the potential of the technology for high-performance cars — much higher than Tesla would be able to sell to a mass market. So he quit Tesla and set out to build the highest performance electric vehicle possible, without worrying about whether it would have much of a market.

He started Wrightspeed in 2005 and came up with the X1, a street-legal sports car that goes from 0 to 60 mph in 2.9 seconds. That’s still faster than the fastest Tesla. In 2006, he took me for a in-vehicle computer in his prototype, accelerating to 75 km per hour and pinning me to the passenger seat in the 45 meters or so between his parking space and the closed iron gate at the entrance to the parking lot. Out on the street, we raced from stop sign to stop sign and zoomed around a highway cloverleaf, pulling, Wright told me, about 1.4 G — though it felt like more. He had succeeded in building a high performance vehicle pc.

img
Photo: Wrightspeed
Ian Wright
Venture capitalists, it turned out, were not as uninterested in the size of the market as Wright was, and he couldn’t get the $8 million or so he thought he needed to turn in-vehicle computer into a real business. He made the rounds of VCs throughout 2007 and got rejected again and again. Then one VC, Nancy Kamei at Intel Capital, made a suggestion that got him thinking: Making a complete car takes a huge amount of capital, she told him, and all your innovation is in the powertrain, not the rest of the vehicle pc. Why not just make powertrains?

Powertrains, Wright mused. It’s not likely that car manufacturers could be convinced to use a powertrain from some startup, and car owners rarely replace a powertrain, even if the replacement would save money in fuel and maintenance. But truck owners do. Trucks, he thought, can last 20 or 30 years, and go through several in-vehicle system replacements. He started investigating the truck business, and found out one more encouraging thing — trucks sold to fleets are practically custom designed, with certain engines or other parts designated. If he could get fleet owners interested in his powertrain, he might be able to sell it into trucks coming off the line in addition to marketing it as a replacement item.

And that was the pivot. Wright turned away from his idea of building a sexy super-sportscar to the not-so-glamorous business of trucks. That approach attracted nearly $17 million in investment. Wrightspeed now has 18 employees, mostly engineers, in an office in San Jose and is looking to hire more in-vehicle system. FedEx is the company’s lead customer. It’s building electric powertrains with range-extending generators that can run on diesel, gasoline, CNG, or other fuels, The company designed its own motors, gearboxes, inverters, cooling system, and LCD instrument panels, tying it all together with custom software. The only significant parts provided by outside suppliers are the electric generators and batteries. The systems reportedly sell for less than $100,000; exact numbers aren’t available.

Wrightspeed shipped its first order of two powertrain systems to FedEx late last year, and just got an order for another 25 this month; that might not sound like a lot, but it’s a huge vote of confidence from the owner of a major fleet of vehicles. Wrightspeed is also getting attention from people who operate garbage trucks. Garbage and recycling collection company the Ratto Group approached Wrightspeed about creating a powertrain suited to garbage trucks; Wrightspeed did so and Ratto has ordered 17 systems.

“The average garbage truck in the U.S. spends $55,000 a year on vehicle pc, and up to $30,000 a year on maintenance, mostly brake replacements.” Wrightspeed’s electric motors will cut those fuel costs by more than half, and its regenerative braking technology will cut maintenance costs, also by more than half.

While the Ratto Group contacted the company by email, others are literally showing up on the doorstep. “We’ve had people from Russia knock on our door and say that want to buy stuff,” he says.

It looks like Wrightspeed will be able to make a solid in-vehicle system business out of selling range-extended electric powertrains. But the company has another asset that might turn out to be a much bigger deal — a patent for “vehicle dynamics control in electric drive vehicles” received earlier this year, number 8718897. This vehicle pc technology stemmed from a problem that needed to be solved to make Wright’s initial sports car prototype safe to drive. If you weren’t an experienced race car driver, it was really hard to control — so hard that a friend of Wright’s wrapped it around a tree during a test drive.

In order to keep his other in-vehicle system away from trees, Wright decided that the car would have to automatically control traction, torque, and a wide range of other vehicle dynamics. To make the car “safe to drive if you’re not Michael Schumacher,” he started by giving each wheel its own motor. That’s been done before, and people are looking at using the ability to control motors independently as part of antiskid and anti-lock braking systems. But Wright went a few steps further. He set up each motor to be continuously controlled individually by the vehicle control computer, operating at independent speeds. He added individual gearing systems at each wheel.  And then he developed software that continually adjusts these individual speeds to keep the car hugging the road. He says his continually adjusting approach gives better traction control, anti-lock braking, and yaw stability control than current technology, which kicks in to adjust individual brakes or redirect in-vehicle system to a particular wheel only when it detects a problem.

This patent will likely bring in cash through licenses to a variety of electric vehicle manufacturers. Eventually, he thinks, someone else will use the technology to create the fastest, highest performance, electric car of its generation. And maybe he’ll buy one with his profits from garbage trucks.

refer to:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/transportation/advanced-cars/ian-wright-is-turning-garbage-trucks-and-fedex-vans-into-high-performance-evs

2014年10月27日 星期一

Plate and Switch: Google's Self-Driving Car Is a Transformer Too

Google's license to test autonomous in-vehicle computer in Nevada was granted to a robotic Prius, so why is a Lexus SUV wearing the plates? It’s all legal, and that might be a problem

In fact, an investigation by IEEE Spectrum uncovered that none of the Priuses that Nevada originally licensed as AU-001, AU-002, or AU-003 were the vehicle evaluated by DMV officials in 2012. This means that none of Google’s self-driving vehicles licensed to drive on Nevada’s roads have actually taken the state’s self-driving test.

Google is not breaking the law. While Nevada’s self-driving test covers many of the same scenarios as in a human exam, such as city driving, highway driving, crosswalks, traffic lights, and roundabouts, it was designed to evaluate the vehicle pc underlying artificial intelligence of autonomous driving rather than specific vehicles, hardware, or versions of software. Thus, once a single Google car had passed the test, the company was free to register other vehicles for its own trials. Google did this again when it renewed its testing license in 2014, transferring the nation’s first “AU” license plates to three Lexus hybrids packed with new or upgraded sensors and software.

Of the few states that have welcomed experimental self-driving vehicles, only Nevada requires a vehicle pc test drive, and there is no suggestion that the Lexus SUVs pose any greater risk to the public than the Priuses. Nevertheless, this casual substitution of complex systems has some experts concerned. Bryant Walker Smith is a law professor at the University of South Carolina and chair of the Emerging Technology Law Committee of the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies. He says, “Autonomous vehicles are necessarily a combination of hardware and software. You couldn’t simply take Google’s algorithms for the Prius and apply them to the Lexus SUV. Anything down to the tire pressure can be relevant for how a vehicle will respond in emergency situations. Braking force, the condition of the brakes, and sightlines are all functions of the hardware and can potentially vary from vehicle to in-vehicle computer, even within the same make, model, and year.”

“It shows the disconnect between Google’s thinking about driverless cars and everyone else's,” says Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington who specializes in robotics and public policy. “Google's engineers are thinking, ‘When we model the world, how well does our vehicle respond? The in-vehicle computer physical shell that lives in is less important. What ultimately matters is the quality of that software.’ ”

Google was the driving force behind the Nevada regulations. “The whole set of developments in Nevada have been at the behest of, and working closely with, Google,” says Calo. And there are some very good reasons to allow flexibility in the testing and licensing of autonomous vehicles, especially experimental ones. The software in today’s self-driving vehicles is typically changed frequently, even daily. No one would want a critical safety update, for example, to be delayed by a complex regulatory process. And yet the wholesale grandfathering in of new vehicles, technologies, sensors, and software raises concerns over what exactly is being tested and why.

For its part, Nevada insists that safety is the most important part of its autonomous vehicle testing program. “At this time, the department does not view the changes as justification for Google to provide another demonstration,” says Jude Hurin, the DMV manager who oversees experimental autonomous vehicles in the state.

But that doesn't mean Nevada isn't keeping an eye on things. “Google recently reported that they would be testing an autonomous vehicle that has no steering wheel. My opinion is that Nevada would not allow testing of this vehicle without a steering wheel since it does not meet the intent of our existing safety requirements,” says Hurin.

However, given that the license-renewal process does not currently require Google to submit any technical data for new in-vehicle system in cars, it is unclear how Nevada would identify the vehicles it wanted to recertify in the first place.

“The traditional regulatory model simply isn’t prepared to address this technology,” says Smith. “One thing we might see is more states, and even the federal government, moving to embrace process standards. That is, looking not at how something performs but what was the thought that went into it; the processes used to design in-vehicle system, test, and verify it; and what safety protocols were implemented. Realistically, these are the only things that can be well measured.”Until then, Google’s historic AU-001 self-driving car can keep on transforming—and keep driving on Nevada's roads.

refer to:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/advanced-cars/plate-and-switch-googles-selfdriving-car-is-a-transformer-too

2014年10月21日 星期二

Learn More About Industry Applications for Acrosser Fanless Mini PC AES-HM76Z1FL!

In this article, Acrosser Technology would like to demonstrate 2 benefits of choosing AES-HM76Z1FL as an industrial PC solution. The following introduction and related product film reveal the unimaginable versatility of AES-HM76Z1FL.

Portable and Powerful
With a height of only 20 mm, this ultra-slim embedded computer is an ideal product for mobile use, and can easily handle tasks that require high computing performance; for example, artists, graphic designers, and filmmakers rely on AES-HM76Z1FL’s computing performance for postproduction when creating artwork. The mobility of this machine enables these artists to carry AES-HM76Z1FL from the studio to the job site with ease.

Space-compensating and Environmental-adaptive
Limited space for embedded PCs has always been a problem for our system integrators. With its ultra slim form factor (274 mm x 183 mm x 20 mm), AES-HM76Z1FL is truly a space-saving piece of hardware that fits almost anywhere, including meeting rooms, offices, classrooms, retail locations, and even at home for home automation. In addition, this model can be used as a digital signage device, providing 24/7 display, or as a smart classroom device, supporting interactive teaching or e-learning functions.

2014年10月14日 星期二

Vulnerable "Smart" Devices Make an Internet of Insecure Things

According to recent research, 70 percent of Americans plan to own, in the next five years, at least one smart appliance like an internet-connected refrigerator or thermostat. That's a skyrocketing adoption rate considering the number of smart appliance owners in the United States today is just four percent.

Yet backdoors and other insecure channels have been found in many such devices, opening them to possible hacks, botnets, and other cyber mischief. Although the widely touted hack of smart refrigerators earlier this year has since been debunked, there’s still no shortage of vulnerabilities in the emerging network appliance so-called Internet of Things.

Enter, then, one of the world’s top research centers devoted to IT security, boasting 700 students in this growing field, the Horst Gortz Institute for IT Security at Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany. A research group at HGI, led by Christof Paar—professor and chair for embedded system at the Institute—has been discovering and helping manufacturers patch security holes in Internet-of-Things devices like appliances, cars, and the wireless routers they connect with.

Paar, who is also adjunct professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, says there are good engineering, technological, and even cultural reasons why industrial computer security of the Internet of Things is a very hard problem.

For starters, it’s hard enough to get people to update their laptops and smartphones with the latest security patches. Imagine, then, a world where everything from your garage door opener, your coffeemaker, your eyeglasses, and even your running shoes have possible vulnerabilities. And the onus is entirely on you to download and install firmware updates—if there are any.

Of the network appliance scores of papers and research reports the Embedded System group publishes, Paar says one of the most often overlooked factors behind hacking is not technological vulnerabilities but economic ones.

“There’s a reason that a lot of this hacking happens in countries that are economically not that well off,” Paar says. “I think most people would way prefer having a good job in Silicon Valley or in a well-paying European company—rather than doing illegal stuff and trying to sell their services.”

But as long as there are industrial computer hackers, whatever their circumstances and countries of origin, Paar says smart engineering and present-day technology can stop most of them in their tracks.

“Our premise is that it’s not that easy to do embedded system right, and that essentially has been confirmed,” he says. “There are very few systems we looked at that we couldn’t break. The shocking thing is the technology is there to get the security right. If you use state of the art technology, you can build systems that are very secure for practical applications.”

refer to:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/computing/networks/vulnerable-smart-devices-make-an-internet-of-insecure-things

2014年10月7日 星期二

Calculating SSD useable life in embedded medical equipment applications


Embedded systems demand some of the toughest storage requirements embedded designers must fulfill. Solid-State Drive (SSD) technology has advanced to meet high end-user and embedded system OEM expectations for storage in terms of capacity, performance, reliability, longevity, and low total cost of ownership. Gary presents a new metric to measure SSD technology and emphasizes the importance of using SSDs with drive useage monitoring to prevent medical device failure.

SSDs have evolved to become a viable option to replace rotating Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) in many embedded systems, including medical equipment. This is because SSDs eliminate the single largest industrial computer mechanism in most medical systems – the moving parts of HDDs.

Medical devices have long product test and network appliance qualification cycles and are subject to rigorous regulatory approval processes. These processes are necessary given that primary hard drive failure is an unfortunate reality in all devices, not just medical devices; it is not “if” but “when” an HDD will fail because it has moving parts that at some point will wear out and stop functioning. When failure occurs, it can be a regulatory nightmare.

The Safe Medical Device Act of 1990 authorizes the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate medical devices. Hospitals and health care organizations must report all network appliance failure causing serious illness, injury, or death. This can result in costly lawsuits, product recalls, and untold ill will. Even if there is no fatality, at the very least, the industrial computer device will have to be requalified through the FDA, which could take years and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Storage solutions must be rugged and able to perform in critical applications without failure. A small footprint is often required, as well as tolerance to high shock and vibration and protection against drive corruption from power disturbances caused by user error or environmental conditions.

In addition to these requirements, medical equipment designers face continued pressure to reduce overall system costs in medical equipment. NAND flash components have advanced to deliver lower cost per bit, but in doing so, have sacrificed reliability and endurance. This has led many OEMs to question how long an SSD will last in their critical medical applications.

To help industrial computer designers address this significant industry concern, the following discussion provides a brief overview of recent changes in NAND flash technology and some of the algorithms SSD vendors use to manage those changes. Using this common data, a new network appliance methodology can help designers predict useful life by outlining the parameters that SSD manufacturers control (such as the type of NAND used, write performance, and write amplification) and those that system OEMs can control (usage model, capacity, and write duty cycle).

refer to:
http://embedded-computing.com/articles/calculating-medical-equipment-applications/#at_pco=cfd-1.0&at_ab=-&at_pos=1&at_tot=5&at_si=54335284b429b4f9

2014年9月30日 星期二

Visit Acrosser’s APTA EXPO Micro Site for Success Stories, Online Reservation, and More!


APTA EXPO is arriving in 2 weeks, and Acrosser is pleased to announce the official launch of its APTA EXPO micro site! With various interactive features and EXPO-related information, the micro site can greatly benefit both event participants and nonparticipants. The first feature of the micro site that we would like to introduce is the online reservation function. With an estimated 15,000 professionals present at this 3 day event, scheduling a meeting session with Acrosser Sales Team prior to your visit will ensure that you can maximize your time with us. Make a reservation now and visit Acrosser at Booth #1760 to guarantee a smooth business meeting at APTA EXPO 2014!
For those who cannot make it to Houston, we have displayed the products we will be demonstrating at APTA EXPO at the bottom of the micro site, making you an online APTA EXPO visitor instantly. Do not hesitate to leave a sales quote if you find a vehicle PC suitable for your vehicular solutions. To inspire potential customers to consider new business opportunities, Acrosser has also published two client success stories, related press announcements, and videos on the micro site. With so many features on this tiny micro site, Acrosser looks forward to fruitful discussions with customers, and wishes all professionals a wonderful APTA EXPO experience both online and offline.
Acrosser USA Inc.

2014年9月22日 星期一

Bringing creative training for embedded engineering students

Shawn Jordan, Assistant Professor at Arizona State University's Fulton Schools of Engineering, has combined his industrial computer proficiency and passion for making and teaching into the embedded sbc program, which challenges middle school and high school students to apply the engineering design process to create and build embedded sbc chain reaction machines.

"It teaches engineering skills, systems thinking, and collaboration, and integrates the arts with the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math," Jordan says. Adding arts to the traditional STEM acronym transforms it to network appliance.

STEAM Labs? brings deeper opportunities for creativity not often found in engineering outreach program activities.

"Rube Goldberg Machines engage students on multiple levels to design industrial computer that they want to solve and the solutions for those problems (similar to the maker movement)," Jordan says. "This is different than many of the standard network appliance activities, where students are given a specific problem to solve. This environment creates an opportunity for creativity, imagination, and making dreams of inventions a reality."

Scholars in engineering and gifted education have developed the embedded sbc program over the past seven years, and it has been deployed to more than 2,500 middle and high school students in the U.S. and Trinidad and Tobago. Students work in face-to-face and virtual teams at camps to build chain-reaction embedded sbc in a project-based, cooperative learning environment with online collaboration tools.

Engineering design will be a requirement in science classes beginning in fall 2015 as part of the Next Generation Science Standards for K-12 education in the U.S. STEAM Labs? is designed to help students better understand engineering career possibilities in addition to learning real-world engineering skills.

"The program challenges industrial computer students to not only ask 'why?' but also 'why not?' – a question that I think is all too often lost in today's youth," Jordan says. "This in turn helps students understand that you can be creative and be successful in engineering – an important message, given pop culture's less-than-flattering messages about engineering."

refer to:
http://embedded-computing.com/articles/bringing-creative-engineering-students/

2014年9月16日 星期二

Acrosser Will Exhibit its Latest In-Vehicle Computers and Related Accessories at APTA EXPO 2014.


Acrosser USA Inc. is pleased to announce our participation in APTA EXPO 2014 at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas, from October 13–15, 2014. Acrosser cordially welcomes all guests to visit us at Booth #1760, and we look forward to a productive session with everyone. APTA EXPO features massive professionals in the public transportation industry. This iconic show is held once every 3 years, and this year Acrosser will greet the global audience with its rugged in-vehicle computers.

Acrosser’s rugged in-vehicle computers have passed a series of certifications including CE, FCC, and E-mark, providing reliable system stability for multiple vehicle applications. These applications include fleet management, GPS tracking, fatigue detection, stock management, and more. By integrating these applications, in-vehicle PCs can reduce expenses, improve efficiency, and increase profit for vendors and traffic service providers. At APTA EXPO 2014, Acrosser will place particular emphasis on AIV-HM76V0FL, an Intel® Core™ i7-based vehicle PC created for the performance-based market. To learn more about application stories and other products that Acrosser will be exhibiting at APTA EXPO 2014, please visit our EXPO micro site.

In addition to in-vehicle computers, Acrosser will also demonstrate our vehicle accessories and embedded SBC to satisfy all audiences. So during your visit to APTA EXPO, don’t forget to stop by Booth #4773. With nearly 3 decades of industry experience, Acrosser is truly a trustworthy vehicle PC and industrial computer supplier.

Acrosser USA Inc.
Visit our micro site for APTA EXPO!

Contact Us:
http://www.acrosser.com/inquiry.html

2014年9月9日 星期二

Hardware commoditization and the IoT service model

As embedded system hardware margins continue to shrink, system developers must explore new ways of monetizing their products. Earlier this year, economist Jeremy Rifkin released the book “The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism.” In it, Rifkin argues that the Internet of Things (IoT), which he defines as a unison of the Communications, Logistics, and Energy Internets, will converge with the competitive capitalist market to usher in a period of extreme economic productivity in which “the cost of actually producing each additional unit – if fixed costs are not counted – becomes essentially zero, making the product nearly free.” As a result, capitalism as we know it today will be slowly replaced by the distributive economic model of the Collaborative Commons.

While this notion may be objectionable to those of you in the Western world, there’s no denying that the cost of compute and connectivity are in a sustained decline. Moore’s Law continues (at least for now) to eat away at the margins of hardware vendors, and Google Fiber is currently providing free 5 Mbps Internet in Austin, Texas, Kansas City, Missouri, and Provo, Utah, with 1 Gbps speeds available for $70 per month. Trends like these embedded system have led to a lot of business model rethinks in the tech sector, with many companies turning to the cloud for answers.

The cloud space has become a crowded one to say the least over the past couple of years, partially because of the “services” model it offers businesses. Today cloud service models range from Software-as-a-Service to Platform-as-a-Service to Infrastructure-as-a-Service (SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS, respectively), with the newly coined Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS) entering the fold as well. These service platforms deliver everything from industrial computer storage and security to full-blown end-user applications, which can each be neatly packaged as line items on a monthly statement.

So why is the cloud important for embedded developers? Hardware commoditization.

Industrial computer commoditization and the IoT-as-a-Service.
As the dust settles around industrial computer IoT standardization, open, modular embedded system with an emphasis on software development and app enablement will take precedence over custom or application-specific hardware designs (look at the success of “maker” boards like the Raspberry Pi). Does your next system require wireless connectivity? Order a Wi-Fi module from Shanghai. Do you also need analog sensors? Browse the capes on Adafruit’s website. If Rifkin’s predictions hold true, specialized hardware will only be sustainable in a very narrow set of fringe applications, so the majority of system developers will have to find other ways to create value.

Take, for example, a company based out of Naperville, Illinois that produces a line of Wi-Fi sensors for home and building network appliance. ConnectSense sensors range from temperature and humidity to water, motion, light, and dry contacts, but the target market demanded a cost-conscious approach across the product line. Therefore, the company organized the portfolio around a base platform consisting of a repurposed ARM7 SoC that was developed in-house, a TI MSP430 MCU, and a low-cost, low-power Wi-Fi module from partner Shanghai High-Flying Electronics Technology Co., Ltd. This approach allows multiple sensors to be manufactured quickly and easily with only few modifications to the common platform.

What makes an tool architecture like network appliance unique, however, is that it’s also powered by a proprietary cloud platform that handles most of the heavy lifting of software and industrial computer, so additional hardware resources aren’t required on the physical sensors themselves. For novice users, the ConnectSense cloud provides an if/then rules engine that can be used to set up alerts via email, text message, phone call, webhook, or tweet in a plug-and-play fashion, while more advanced developers can take advantage of a full REST API (Figure 1). Today the embedded system is being leveraged in applications such as datacenter monitoring and agricultural observation.

refer to:
http://embedded-computing.com/articles/hardware-commoditization-and-the-iot-service-model/

2014年9月1日 星期一

GPS VEHICLE TRACKING WINS MORE BUSINESS: DON'T LET COMPETITORS STEAL YOUR CLIENTS AND PROSPECTS!


Many of our customers started out leery of vehicle pc GPS vehicle tracking. What will my drivers think? Is it reliable? Is it anything more than just seeing my trucks on a map? These are all valid concerns for any business owner.

The truth is our customers routinely look back on those kinds of questions and shake their heads, wondering what they were worried about. For instance, after just the first year Mark Sperry, Service Manager at Fettes, Love & Sieban, says he brought in $60,000 in additional revenue just through increased fleet management productivity.  How does vehicle tracking help a company bring in more money? Better vehicle pc dispatching, more efficient routing, more accurate invoices, even fewer calls between drivers and the office.

Let's look at an example of how a plumber without tracking might handle a service call:

The office gets a call from a homeowner who's ankle-deep in water. The homeowner is in a less-traveled part of town unfamiliar to the dispatcher. The dispatcher goes to Google Maps, types in the address from the panicked homeowner and sees it's on the other side of town. The homeowner wants to know how soon someone can be there. The dispatcher says she'll call back as soon as possible, hangs up and starts calling technicians. She starts with Bill, who she thinks might be nearby. Turns out Bill is on the in-vehicle computer other side of town still finishing up an earlier job. She calls Ray, who doesn't answer (probably under a sink, she thinks). She calls Annie, Steve, Wayne. No one is nearby. Suddenly the phone rings again. It's Oscar and he's calling in-vehicle computer to say he finished his last job early and is on his way back to the office. The dispatcher asks which job he finished and it turns out it was three blocks away from the panicked homeowner. Unfortunately he's almost back to the office. "Turn around Oscar! Go back north to 1615 Elm Terrace! There's a broken pipe!" Oscar grumbles and turns around. The dispatcher calls the panicked homeowner to say someone's on the way. Unfortunately the homeowner, who wasn't about to stand around waiting, has already called a competitor who's on the fleet management way.

Now let's look at how the same plumber with GPS tracking handles the call:

The office gets a call from a homeowner who's ankle-deep in water. The fleet management is in a less-traveled part of town unfamiliar to the dispatcher. The dispatcher pulls up their GPS tracking software and sees not only where the client is, but that one of her technicians; Oscar is on the move three blocks away. She sends Oscar directions directly to his Garmin GPS unit and he's there in minutes, helping the homeowner.

The lesson? You probably just earned a customer for life, thanks to GPS vehicle tracking.

refer to:
http://www.fleetmatics.com/gps-vehicle-tracking-wins-more-business/900

2014年8月26日 星期二

Embedded HMIs evolve to match consumer tech expectations in the factory

"Industrial computer and cameras and Their Technical Features," the 6th annual camera survey published by FRAMOS, takes a look at the opinions of 15 international camera manufacturers and 43 end users of machine vision cameras, and what it might mean for network appliance and its future.

Those industrial computer manufacturers surveyed indicate that the applications for which users purchased their cameras varies. According to the survey,  automation in production, quality assurance, and measuring technology each accounted for 22%, while automation in logistics automation (17%), and transport measurement (16%), came in just behind them.  On the other hand, end users indicate that 25% purchased cameras for use in automation in production, while 22% planned to use the cameras for quality assurance. In addition, 17% intended on using the cameras for logistics automation, 11% in measurement technology, and 7% for embedded computer traffic measurement. In terms of pricing, networks users indicated via their answers that paying for a high-quality camera was worth it to them. Forty percent of users surveyed indicated that they purchased industrial computer with cameras between €1,000 and €3,000 while 30% purchased cameras between €650 and $1,000.

When it comes to industrial computer and networks image sensors, users identified Sony as the "leader of the pack,"while Aptina and Truesense were just behind. (Both of which were recently acquired by ON automation and industrial Semiconductor.) CMOSIS and embedded computer saw a considerable rise in popularity since last year, as both embedded computer companies released CMOS sensors with global shutter technology.

Nearly 71% of embedded computer manufacturers said that they believe CCD sensors will continue to have a share of 60% of the market in two years, while users believe CMOS and CCD will be on par by that time. Survey author Dr.-Ing. Ronald Muller, Head of Product Marketing FRAMOS suggested that this could be because CMOS sensors are less expensive than CCD,  and that CCD industrial market leader Sony has been ramping up its efforts for CMOS sensors in industrial network appliance.

refer to:
http://embedded-computing.com/articles/embedded-tech-expectations-the-factory/

2014年8月19日 星期二

Acrosser will present its latest in-vehicle computers and embedded system at Guangzhou IT Week and Automechanika Frankfurt this September.


ACROSSER Technology, a world-leading industrial computer manufacturer, is pleased to announce its participation in Guangzhou IT Week and Automechanika Frankfurt. Both events take place in September, and we cordially welcome you to pay a visit.

Guangzhou IT Week (September 19–21, 2014 in Guangzhou, China)
Selected by the Taipei Computer Association (TCA), Acrosser is one of the few privileged Taiwanese manufacturers that will have the opportunity to exhibit its products at the Taiwan Pavilion Hall at Guangzhou IT week. These products include the in-vehicle PC AIV-HM76V0FL and the embedded system AES-HM76Z1FL. This year marks the 14th anniversary of Guangzhou IT week, and this year’s convention will feature the latest topics, such as smart city solutions, IoT, and cloud computing. Acrosser’s AES-HM76Z1FL is a mini PC (272mm × 183mm × 20mm) with unrivaled computing performance, and the in-vehicle computer is a perfect hardware solution for car applications.

Automechanika Frankfurt (September 16–20, 2014 in Frankfurt, Germany)
During this 5-day event, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) will promote and display automotive products that have won the Taiwan Excellence Awards and the ITS/Telematics Top 100 Award. Acrosser’s fanless in-vehicle computers AR-V6100FL and AR-V6002FL will be greeting the audience at the TAITRA stand (located at Halle 4 Ebene 2 Stand J71). The Automechanika is an automotive trade fair held in 13 countries worldwide, and Acrosser’s in-vehicle computers are ready to win the hearts of visitors at this global event.

Acrosser Technology Co., Ltd.
Contact Us:
http://www.acrosser.com/inquiry.html

Product Information:
AES-HM76Z1FL
AIV-HM76V0FL
AR-V6100FL
AR-V6002FL

2014年8月12日 星期二

Industrial computer survey provides potential glimpse into future of camera market


"Industrial Cameras and Their Technical Features," the 6th annual camera survey published by FRAMOS, takes a look at the opinions of 15 international camera manufacturers and 43 end users of machine vision cameras, and what it might mean for the future.

Those manufacturers surveyed indicate that the applications for which users purchased their cameras varies. According to the survey,  automation in production, quality assurance, and measuring technology each accounted for 22%, while automation in logistics automation (17%), and transport measurement (16%), came in just behind them.  On the other hand, end users indicate that 25% purchased cameras for use in automation in production, while 22% planned to use the cameras for quality assurance. In addition, 17% intended on using the cameras for logistics automation, 11% in measurement technology, and 7% for embedded computer traffic measurement. In terms of pricing, networks users indicated via their answers that paying for a high-quality camera was worth it to them. Forty percent of users surveyed indicated that they purchased cameras between €1,000 and €3,000 while 30% purchased cameras between €650 and $1,000.

When it comes to networks image sensors, users identified Sony as the "leader of the pack,"while Aptina and Truesense were just behind. (Both of which were recently acquired by ON automation and industrial Semiconductor.) CMOSIS and embedded computer saw a considerable rise in popularity since last year, as both companies released CMOS sensors with global shutter technology.

Nearly 71% of manufacturers said that they believe CCD sensors will continue to have a share of 60% of the market in two years, while users believe CMOS and CCD will be on par by that time. Survey author Dr.-Ing. Ronald Muller, Head of Product Marketing FRAMOS suggested that this could be because CMOS sensors are less expensive than CCD,  and that CCD industrial market leader Sony has been ramping up its efforts for CMOS sensors in industrial applications.

refer to: 
http://www.vision-systems.com/articles/2014/08/industrial-camera-survey-provides-potential-glimpse-into-future-of-camera-market.html

2014年8月4日 星期一

Sensing networks in industrial automation


Sensors are a huge part of industrial applications. IHS estimates that over 100 million discrete sensors were shipped into industrial automation sectors in 2013. These vary greatly in size, use, and capability. Not all sensors are small and simple: some offer extensive functionality and the ability to connect to wider industrial automation networks. These more capable embedded computer sensors are becoming critical for the collection of data from industrial environments. They are helping move towards the next stage of industrial automation, whether this is called advanced manufacturing, “Industry 4.0,” or something else.

As a brief overview, IHS views the term “Industry 4.0” as the combination of many factors and trends, including industrial networking, distributed embedded computer, cybersecurity, Big Data, and analytics, among other things, and combining these all to create a smart factory. Sensors offer great potential to gather extensive data from production lines and plants, which can increasingly be distributed via a network, analyzed, and then used to make better informed decisions. Benefits can include safety improvements, increased uptime, lower energy costs, and quicker or easier maintenance. There are potentials security concerns, however.

Of course, for this to be implemented it requires a sensor capable of transmitting data over a network. Networkable sensors still make up only a smaller portion of the market, with a large number using basic signals to transmit information to a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). Those sensors that are able to transmit data directly over a network generally also have some level of intelligence too, which can take loads off the embedded computer or other controller.

These sensors communicate with a wide array of networking technologies, be they Ethernet- or fieldbus-based. It shows the estimated split between the two technologies. AS-i and IO-Link, two technologies that are more orientated towards sensors, are also highlighted (IHS defines these as fieldbus technologies). It is clear that the vast majority of networkable sensors utilize fieldbus-based networks, often HART or PROFIBUS. An estimated one-fifth of devices use AS-i, and although it is not seen by some as a true networking technology, AS-i is widely used and has been adopted by most major sensor manufacturers.

IO-Link has the potential to be the main competition for AS-i in the future. However, there’s currently a lack of support from sensor vendors and the fact that AS-i has a safety variant may negatively impact on IO-Link adoption. In response, the IO-Link Safety group was recently founded, with a key aim of establishing a safety variant of the technology. Once this is available and proven, it should further bolster the excellent adoption rate that IO-Link is currently experiencing.

The remaining 12 percent share of networking technology adoption for sensors is split amongst a number of Ethernet variants. There are as many Ethernet variants as fieldbus, but they are considerably younger to market and as such are not yet as widely adopted. Fieldbus technologies are certainly not going to disappear overnight, but Ethernet adoption for sensor networking is growing more quickly. A variety of factors are driving this, but the most important is easy integration and interoperability with other industrial automation equipment that is already widely networked via Ethernet, be it in standard TCP/IP form or another embedded computer deterministic variant.

The popularity and growth of Ethernet adoption has filtered down from consumer/enterprise networking. It was first used at the industrial information level, then the controller level, and is now slowly being seen at the field level. The transition from fieldbus to Ethernet is going to take time, as factories and large plants are rarely refitted. This means that a large portion of embedded computer will continue to be fieldbus-based, or perhaps an Ethernet/fieldbus hybrid for some time. So while the door has been opened for advanced sensor networks, we are still a long way from moving towards ”Industry 4.0” and the benefits that a networked sensor array can bring.

refer to: 
http://industrial.embedded-computing.com/articles/sensing-networks-industrial-automation/