Robotics starter kit.

The Kria™ KR260 Robotics Starter Kit is the latest addition to the AMD Kria portfolio of adaptive system-on-modules (SOMs) and developer kits. A scalable and out-of-the-box development platform for robotics, the Kria KR260 offers a seamless path to production deployment with the existing Kria K26 adaptive SOMs. With native ROS 2 support, the standard framework for robotics application development, and pre-built interfaces for robotics and industrial solutions, the new SOM starter kit enables rapid development of hardware-accelerated applications for robotics, machine vision and industrial communication and control. It is immediately available from AMD and its network of worldwide distributors.

KR260 End to End Robotics Platform

“The Kria KR260 Robotics Starter Kits builds on the success of our Kria SOMs and KV260 Vision AI Starter Kit for AI and embedded developers, providing roboticists with a complete, out-of-the-box solution for this rapidly growing application space,” said Chetan Khona, senior director of Industrial, Vision, Healthcare and Sciences Markets at AMD. “Roboticists will now be able to work in their standard development environment on a platform that has all the interfaces and capabilities needed to be up and running in less than an hour. The KR260 Starter Kit is an ideal platform to accelerate robotics innovation and easily take ideas to production at scale.”

With industry analyst firm Omdia forecasting the robotics components market to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.4 percent between 2019 and 2025, with the overall world markets revenue to increase to approximately $126 billion by 20251, the Kria KR260 end-to-end adaptive robotics platform is expected to deliver nearly a 5X productivity gain over competitive, Nvidia GPU-based solutions2. Additionally, by accelerating the design cycle compared to chip-down design, the Kria SOM portfolio typically offers up to a nine-month savings in time-to-deployment, meaning getting started becomes quick and easy for all kinds of developers with no FPGA expertise required.

Complete Industrial Solution
The KR260 hardware platform provides pre-built interfaces for robotics and industrial solutions that, combined with a growing list of accelerated applications delivered via the AMD-Xilinx App Store, enable easy evaluation and a seamless path to deployment.

For Machine Vision

Central to the KR260 design experience and making the benefits of adaptive computing more accessible to the robotics community is the Kria Robotics Stack (KRS), an integrated set of robot libraries and utilities that use hardware to accelerate the development, maintenance and commercialization of industrial-grade robotic solutions targeting Kria SOMs. The low-latency, adaptive computing architecture of Kria SOMs implemented with KRS and ROS 2 can deliver over 8X better performance/watt3 and up to 3.5X lower latency4 compared to competitive GPU-based solutions.

The KR260 also includes support for the widely-adopted Ubuntu embedded operating system, providing compatibility with the latest long-term support (LTS) versions of Ubuntu Linux Desktop (22.04) from Canonical and ROS 2 Humble Hawksbill.

AMD is collaborating with Open Robotics, the creators of ROS 2 and other open software and hardware platforms for robotics, to validate and ensure compliance of our ROS 2 implementation for the robotics community.

"The Kria SOM family and KR260 Starter Kit provide the robotics community with a great combination of performance, flexibility and rapid development time,” said Brian Gerkey, CEO of Open Robotics. “Users can create software-defined hardware and build solutions offering high performance per watt, with security, energy-efficiency and adaptability. Open Robotics is excited to be collaborating with AMD-Xilinx to understand and address the needs of roboticists using hardware acceleration to build new robot applications with the KR260 development platform.”

@AMD @NeeshamPR #Robotics #Manufacturing #PAuto 

No design without reason and no place for gimmicks.

Buttonwood's Graham Meller recently interviewed Sauli Laitinen, who has worked in Vaisala’s ‘ideas factory’ in Helsinki for 14 years, to discover what role R&D plays in protecting and enhancing a company’s brand. This is what he learned.

Sauli Laitinen

The guiding mantra in Vaisala’s design department is ‘no design without reason’. It sounds obvious, but what they really mean is ‘no design without a valid reason’ because they believe that too many companies add features to their products that do not add value for customers.

As Head of Design at the Finnish measurement technology company Vaisala, Sauli Laitinen plays an important role in preserving and enhancing the company’s long-standing reputation for quality and innovation. A heavy responsibility, one might suppose, for someone with two degrees in Psychology, but Sauli is keen to point out that good design is grounded in a deep understanding of customer behaviour. After 14 years working in Research & Development at Vaisala, Sauli says: “I am fortunate to be working in an ‘ideas factory’, which is as exciting now as it was when I first started.” So, we took this opportunity to ask him how important product design is at Vaisala, how it affects the company brand, and why there is ‘no design without reason’.

Curiosity
Vaisala’s history stretches back to the 1930s, when the company’s founder invented some of the operating principles of a radiosonde. Curiosity, the desire to meet challenges, and an extraordinary ability to innovate remain at the company’s core. Today, that focus on innovation is as strong as ever, and has enabled the development of a wide range of technologies which are designed to deliver observations for a better world. Employing around 1,900 people, Vaisala now exports 98% of its production to over 150 countries.

Form follows function

Does this feel like a Vaisala product ?

Design is obviously important for any company that develops and manufactures new products, but for Vaisala, design is something bigger; it defines the whole company. When designing products, Vaisala designers ask themselves: “Does this feel like a Vaisala product?” In doing so, they are not just assessing the physical appearance, although that in itself is important; they are also asking if the product meets the customer needs, as well as the highest standards of accuracy, reliability, longevity and ease of use. As Sauli says: “Our customers expect our products to be the best in the market, so we must not, and will not, disappoint them.”

No idea is a bad idea
Ideas for new market leading products can come from a wide variety of sources, but all of them have to offer something that is not currently available, and they have to solve customers’ problems better than any other product. Following the mantra ‘no design without a reason’, there is no opportunity for design effort to be wasted on work that does not add value in the eyes of customers. “Too often,” Sauli explains, “companies develop products, or product features, that add no real value for users. This can happen when designers are out of touch with customers. We therefore go to great lengths to ensure that all of our candidate products are completely user-centric, and designed for their intended application.”

Finding the right problems to solve is a skilled activity. For Vaisala this involves sending product and application experts out to visit and observe customers doing their normal work. Sauli says: “If you just ask people what they want, there is a danger that you only get half the story, so it is important to observe them in their work; to ask the right questions and find hidden needs, which means that the researchers must have a deep understanding of the customers and their businesses. A key area of expertise is the combination of application knowledge and an ability to provide answers to the questions customers didn’t even know they had.”

It was interesting to note that when we spoke with Sauli he never mentioned competitors. When we asked why, he said: “Of course, if you want to be a market leader, you have to constantly benchmark yourself, but from a product design and development point of view it makes no sense to follow competitors. If you do so, you will always be behind the curve. That’s why we are in continuous dialogue with our customers; looking for opportunities to exceed their expectations and disrupt the market.”

Design Concept

Ideas factory
New product ideas are brought to multi-disciplinary workshops involving staff from several different departments. Emphasizing the importance of this, Sauli says: “We need to consider every customer touch-point in the product journey, which means more than just its operation; it also means manufacturing, packaging, transport, assembly, configuration, maintenance, calibration, disposal or recycling. Every step of the product journey is mapped out so that the design team can predict and prevent potential issues.

“We also need to find those hidden opportunities for improvement. For example, if a customer currently completes a task with two people in a set period of time, the design team’s objective might be to enable one person to do it in a fraction of that time.”

Throughout the design process, the team will continue to ask if the product is solving a genuine customer problem, and if it still feels like a Vaisala product. If an idea passes these tests, sketches and mock-ups are created for early validation of concept.

Image
Mock-ups are assessed against how effectively they solve a customer’s problem; how widely the solution would be adopted; how pleasant the user experience would be; how it would be assembled or configured; how accuracy and reliability can be assured, and how good the product will look and feel. All of these evaluations address the perspective of the user, but it is also necessary to ensure that the product fulfils the needs and expectations of the customer, which may include considerations such as service requirements, longevity, price, lifetime cost, materials and lead times. 

Mock-up

“The early stages of idea generation and evaluation are great fun,” Sauli comments. “However, once a candidate product passes the concept evaluation stage, things rapidly get serious.”

In addition to evaluations, all products are tested to check their reliability, durability, stability and accuracy in all potential conditions, which means that products have to be tested beyond customers’ expectations. Sauli says: “We regard our specifications as a performance promise, so we test our designs rigorously and repeatedly to ensure that we are able to deliver on that promise.”

Design project example: the smart Indigo family
The Vaisala Indigo family of industrial measurement instruments has evolved in recent years as a result of a series of product development programs with common goals; each of which solved specific customer problems. Indigo is a great example of joined-up thinking in the Vaisala ideas factory. At an early stage, the team realised that if a variety of products could be harmonized as a modular family, they would simultaneously solve a number of important customer challenges.

Indigo Mock-ups

The overall aims of the development work were to enable the continuous flow of data; avoiding process down-times, and improving data visualization. Following an extensive development program, it is now possible to measure all of Vaisala’s key parameters with technologies from within the modular Indigo family, and new products are regularly added to the series.

The Indigo range includes intelligent, interchangeable, standalone measurement probes and optional transmitters; all of which are configurable by Vaisala Insight PC Software. The Indigo compatible probes measure key parameters such as humidity, temperature, pressure, dew point, CO2, H2O2 or moisture in oil. Importantly, each of the smart probes can operate as a standalone device, which provides portability advantages for customers. A key advantage is that processes can operate continuously, because each of the probes can be hot-swapped with another.

Summary
Vaisala’s design philosophy can be summarized in three words: insightful, complete and pure. Insightful development programs are grounded in a deep understanding of customer needs, combined with a determination to find innovative solutions. The solutions must be complete, in that they may involve both software and hardware, working harmoniously to exploit the latest technologies to both satisfy and excite prospective users. Last but not least, the new product must be pure – this means it must be credible and recognisable as a Vaisala product. Furthermore, it must be designed for an actual customer need, setting the highest standards in the market with essential features such as accuracy and reliability in the long term.

Finally, of course, there is no place for gimmicks in the Vaisala ideas factory, because there is no design without a reason.

@VaisalaGroup @_Enviro_News #PAuto #Design #Automation

New development chassis.

Flexible, cost-effective platform for open-standards-based application development, integration, testing, and demonstration.

The new DEVPX3 development chassis, from AMETEK Abaco Systems, is aligned to both OpenVPX and SOSA™ standards, providing a flexible, cost-effective platform for open-standards-based application development, integration, and testing. The chassis helps you maintain a robust, fast-paced development program by being able to quickly demonstrate and prove the end capability of your 3U VPX solutions at a system or board level.

The lab-ready DEVPX3 development chassis allows sensor and system solutions providers to shorten lab and demonstration schedules by providing a fast and efficient way to stay up to date on VPX advancements from Abaco and its partners. By re-using existing boards or purchasing economical in-stock air-cooled variants, software and firmware time to market is also shortened.

With eight individual slots, the DEVPX3 supports both conduction and air-cooled Abaco 3U modules aligned to OpenVPX and SOSA standards. The open frame and backplane are quickly configured with off-the-shelf cabling or rear transition modules.

“The DEVPX3 OpenVPX development chassis gives our customers an easy and economical way to solidify and accelerate their own systems as well as enable future products and programs,” says Pete Thompson, vice president of product management, Abaco Systems. “The introduction is yet another example of how Abaco supports our customers by providing exactly what they need from board to lab to rugged production solutions.”

@AMETEKInc #Laboratory 

Global logistics operations centre for Ireland.

The Endress+Hauser Group will soon be managing its worldwide logistics network from a single operations centre in Ireland. A small team of logistics specialists is tasked with managing the day-to-day operation and enabling the smooth and sustainable movement of goods.

Endress+Hauser's Ireland base in Kill, Co Kildare (IRL)

The responsibility of the Global Logistics Operations Centre is to ensure smooth operation of the the company's worldwide logistics chain. The Group’s global transport network has become increasingly regionalised in recent years and the portfolio of carriers and forwarding companies has expanded. 

Thorsten Wilkening (top)
& Oliver Blum

“Global supply and sales networks require making expeditious decisions in the same room,” emphasizes Thorsten Wilkening, Head of Corporate Logistics. Oliver Blum, Corporate Director Supply Chain, adds: “Our utmost concern is satisfying all customers, and that includes the areas of logistics and transport.”

With the creation of the Global Logistics Operations Centre in Ireland, Endress+Hauser is bringing operative control of the logistics processes back into the company. To date this has been the responsibility of a service partner. The first employees were greeted in December of last year. The centre went into operation with a team of 15 specialists in March 2022.

“With this step we want to improve transparency and customer satisfaction,” emphasizes Thorsten Wilkening. 

Oliver Blum expects the change to lead to faster innovation cycles. “By managing the global logistics network ourselves, we can be more agile and make more stringent decisions. We can increase the service level and strengthen our focus on sustainability, for example by always using the most suitable carrier.”

The new centre will operate under the roof of the Irish Sales Centre in Kildare, south of Dublin. Founded in 1979, the Sales Center currently has a team of 30 employees who assist customers primarily in the life-sciences and food industries. A Regional Support Center established at the same locaton in 2016 provides operative and business process support to a large number of sales centers. The Human Resources Shared Services Center team joined the Ireland location in 2020, where it manages learning activities in the worldwide Endress+Hauser network.

 @Endress_Hauser @Endress_US @Endress_UK #Pauto 

Making robotics accessible for everyone.

The Franco-American start-up  Fuzzy Logic originated in the French start-up ecosystem (Agoranov and Wilco), and is developing an "all-in-one" software platform that dramatically simplifies every step of robotisation, from robotic cell design to daily reprogramming in the factory by operators. It reproduces a virtual environment in which the robot in the factory can be controlled "on the fly" and as simply as a video game.

A €2.5 million seed round of financing from two European DeepTech funds: 42CAP, an industry-specialized German fund based in Munich, and Karista (via the Paris Region Venture Fund), an early-stage VC firm based in Paris for the start--up has been announced.

A scalable software platform Fuzzy Studio™ and Fuzzy RTOS™ are currently being deployed at customers in France and Germany, who were specifically chosen for their flexibility and precision requirements. Thanks to awards and support from the French public investment bank, Bpifrance, as well as the European Union, the company has accumulated more than 600,000 euros in pre-seed financing. The current round of fundraising will help them strengthen the technical team in order to deploy to new customers, "Platform Ambassadors", throughout Europe. The Fuzzy Logic mission: unlock flexible production for any manufacturer, by making the robot a simple tool - accessible to any operator.

Fuzzy Studio™ (desktop application) and Fuzzy RTOS™ (embedded software) are no-code platforms, allowing users to control any make of industrial robot, without the need for training or complex programming. Non-roboticist users can intuitively design robotic cells and production operators increase their scope of activity: a clearer and simpler software solution for interacting with robots and “crushing” their complexity. It's the new standard for flexible automation.

Robotics in the service of operators
The platform is attracting strong interest from large companies, especially for applications with many different part types to be programmed or which have demanding quality requirements.

But as well as current users of industrial robots, Fuzzy Logic intends to open up a market that is still in its infancy, that of small and medium-sized industrial companies. The platform removes the complexities of robotic integration and eliminates the need for robotics expertise throughout the service life, two obstacles that until now have often been prohibitive barriers for SMEs and SMBs.

Ryan Lober (left) and Antoine Hoarau, respectively CEO and CTO, co-founders of Fuzzy Logic, state: “We help SMEs to power up their competitiveness and autonomy, by making robots adapt to them - not the other way around. This round of fundraising will allow us to strengthen our R&D teams and deploy our vision of intuitive and flexible robotics among client ambassadors throughout Europe.”

“Fuzzy Logic will be one of the key enablers of the flexible production paradigm changing the industry as we know it today. We were deeply impressed by Ryan Lober’s and Antoine Hoarau’s deep knowledge of the industrial robotics space, as well as the powerful solution they have built. They were able demonstrate everything we seek in entrepreneurs and bring their technology into the hands of industry leaders in real-world use cases. We are more than excited for what lies ahead and are proud to back the team on this journey.” declared Julian von Fischer from 42CAP.

“Fuzzy Logic arrives on the market with a perfect timing given the mass-adoption of industrial robotics and underlying applications. Yet projects remain complex, pricey, and lengthy to implement. We immediately shared Ryan Lober and Antoine Hoarau ’s vision: make robotics accessible for everyone, not only for experts, and revolutionize the way people interact and use industrial robotics. In addition, we have identified a stellar team of entrepreneurs with impressive tech expertise around software and robotics. We are very proud to back them in this new phase” commented Benjamin Zerbib, Investment Director and Yvan-Michel Ehkirch, Managing Partner at Karista.

@fuzzylogicrobot @42Cap1 @KaristaVC @mepaxIntPR #Robotics #PAuto #France

Cookbook in Kitchen for automation & test.

Have you got the correct recipe for your application?

Applitools has launched its “Automation Cookbook,” featuring free bite-sized videos aimed to upskill developers and test engineers of all experience levels. Anyone looking for quick answers to their test automation questions can use recipes to solve everyday challenges and also practice in the Test Kitchen for free.

The initiative is led by Angie Jones, Senior Director of Developer Relations at Applitools and Test Automation University, with contributions from Colby Fayock, Developer Advocate at Applitools.

"For many engineers, it’s common to run into a problem while writing a test. Whether you’re trying to work with alerts or upload a file, you may not be looking for an entire end-to-end course, but a quick solution to a single problem,” said Angie Jones. “We have designed this short-form education program to answer your questions accordingly.”

The Automation Cookbook is the latest test automation resource Applitools is releasing to increase its supply of free and accessible learning resources online for the dev community. It is supplementary to Test Automation University, which has surpassed more than 80,000 students to date and is the flagship resource for engineers to learn new tools and programming languages across various topics in automation.

Since Test Automation University launched in 2019, Applitools has received requests for additional resources to help people quickly find answers to frequent day-to-day questions. Now, with the Automation Cookbook, there is a place to serve bite-sized content in one place without needing to sift through an endless web of long video tutorials, online forums, and Q&A threads just to end up with broken code examples.

“Based on feedback from the community, our goal with the Automation Cookbook is to help engineers get answers to frequently asked questions with a visual coding recipe,” said Colby Fayock.

The launch of the Automation Cookbook includes 12 videos featuring two of the most prominent test automation frameworks for functional testing of web apps, Selenium WebDriver and Cypress. Each framework has six total videos to start. New videos will be added regularly with additional frameworks planned to be featured in the future. The videos range anywhere from 3-10 minutes in length.

Initially, recipes for both Selenium WebDriver in Java as well as Cypress in JavaScript are available:

Uploading Files Interacting with Alerts Selecting from Dropdowns Verifying Sortable Tables Interacting with Browser Notifications Taking Screenshots

Unlike Test Automation University, which focuses on long-form education of complete learning pathways, the Automation Cookbook focuses only on specific tasks. To help engineers practice, Applitools created an open source website, Test Kitchen, with common web widgets to allow anyone to hone their test automation skills and knowledge.

For a pantry full of web components that can be used for automated testing, visit the Test Kitchen.

@Applitools #Pauto #TandM 

Speeding automotive and industrial designs.

Anglia is now supporting the accelerated design of automotive systems and similar projects in robotics, automation and other industrial applications with a comprehensive suite of development boards from STMicroelectronics.

Commenting, Andrew Pockson, Divisional Marketing Manager at Anglia, said, “STMicroelectronics has based AutoDevKit on five guiding principles: ease of prototyping, reuse of code and hardware, maximum design flexibility, reduction of time-to-market and simplify integration of multiple systems. Leveraging their extensive experience and knowledge of the demanding automotive market, STMicroelectronics AutoDevKit ecosystem from Anglia offers an efficient toolset for creating working prototypes, replacing traditional artisan approaches and supporting standardization and design reuse.”

STMicroelectronics AutoDevKit™ fast prototyping development ecosystem is now available from inventory at Anglia, the new development toolset was initially developed to address the automotive and transportation market and is also now finding uses in industrial equipment such as robotics and autonomous systems which share similar application and reliability demands. It provides engineers with the best and easiest way for quick evaluation and rapid prototyping in a common, integrated and flexible environment supporting complete ECU-like development. AutoDevKit gives engineers the flexibility to easily mix and match components to create quick prototypes and consists of a suite of functional boards covering a broad range of applications including LED lighting, power management, sensing, audio, connectivity and communications.

After choosing the preferred AutoDevKit components, users are guided to connect the boards, generate code, compile and download firmware, without forgetting prototype testing and debugging. A fundamental aspect of the AutoDevKit ecosystem is to offer easy-to-use application-program interfaces (API) for communication and control for each of the functional boards supported. AutoDevKit is an Eclipse plugin running under SPC5Studio Integrated Development Environment. It is supported by a free AutoDevKit library, a software environment that lets users select the microcontrollers and functional boards from STMicroelectronics wide automotive portfolio to easily prototype an automotive solution.

@angliaLive @ST_World @NeeshamPR #Automotive #PAuto

Faster smoke detector prototypes.

Tested and Verified Smoke Detector Reference Design and Algorithm

Analog Devices has introduced a reference design and algorithm that enables small form factor, low power, smoke detector designs to be rapidly prototyped and brought to market faster at a reduced cost. 

Their new CN0537 reduces design risk and has been tested and verified to pass the UL 217 Standard for Smoke Alarms, 8th edition, with reduced nuisance alarms. 

CN0537 Reference Design Key Features:

• UL 217 8th edition tested and verified smoke and fire algorithm
• Data package for algorithm development including more than 1,000 smoke datasets taken at UL-217 certified facilities 
• Software providing data pre-processing, initialisation, calibration and environmental compensation source code
• Arduino form factor smoke detector reference design for rapid prototyping and development
• Low power hardware design and low computational algorithm extending battery life and reducing battery size and cost

@ADI_News @ULdialogue #Safety #PAuto

Driver for robotic navigation systems.

ACEINNA has announced the availability of their new OpenIMU ROS Driver for developers of robots and robotic applications.

“This new ROS driver makes it simple to integrate a wide variety of ACEINNA IMUs  - Inertial Measurement Unit sensors) into almost any robotics applications (warehouse robotics, autonomous vehicles, last mile deliver robotics, etc., which uses ROS,” says James Fennelly, Product Marketing Manager – Inertial Systems at ACEINNA. “When combined with our IMU’s industry leading reliability and accuracy, as well as very competitive pricing (under $100 {€85}), developers of robotic solutions finally have an easily integrated, rock-solid solution for their navigation and localization challenges.”

Available on the Sensors Page at ROS.org and GitHub this new driver enables robotic application developers to quickly and easily integrate highly accurate (>1 .5) IMU’s into their navigation guidance systems.

The new ROS Driver currently works with their versatile OpenIMU family, which includes the OpenIMU300ZI, OpenIMU300RI, and OpenIMU330BI. Each sensor has its own distinct hardware features, allowing the user several options for their unique application. The open-source nature of this architecture makes each device highly configurable as well. The OpenIMU’s have several software applications available, with source code available via Github and the ACEINNA Extension on Microsoft Visual Studio Code. Software applications include IMU, VG-AHRS, and INS.

Extremely compact, ACEINNA’s IMUs integrate a triple-redundant architecture, that, when combined with their small, low-cost packaging, meets the challenging performance, reliability and cost requirements of the robotic and autonomous market.

The Robotic Operating System (ROS) is a set of software libraries and tools that help developers create robotics applications. It can be described as a software development kit (SDK). As stated on ROS.org : “The ROS user community builds on top of a common infrastructure to provide an integration point that offers access to hardware drivers, generic robot capabilities, development tools, useful external libraries, and more.” This allows users to get their robotics projects up and running a lot faster than starting from scratch.

Combining the architecture of the ROS environment with the versatility of the OpenIMU platform the possibilities are endless and at the users fingertips.

@MEMSsensortech #PAuto #Transportation #Automotive

AI inference development platform.

Xilinx has announced its AI inference development platform, Vitis™ AI is available for immediate download free of charge.

Combined with the Vitis unified software platform, Vitis AI empowers software developers with deep learning acceleration, as part of their software code. Vitis AI integrates a domain-specific architecture (DSA) and configures Xilinx hardware to be optimized and programmed using industry-leading frameworks like TensorFlow and Caffe. It provides the tools to optimize, compress and compile trained AI models running on a Xilinx device in as little as one minute. Xilinx has also open sourced Vitis accelerated libraries and Vitis AI models, as well as corresponding example designs that can be used from endpoint to edge in addition to cloud platforms.

At the Xilinx Developer Forum (XDF) Americas in early October, Xilinx first unveiled Vitis, a unified software platform that enables a broad new range of developers – including software engineers and AI scientists – to take advantage of the power of hardware adaptability. Five years and a total of 1,000 man years in the making, Vitis automatically tailors the Xilinx hardware architecture to the software or algorithmic code without the need for hardware expertise. Rather than imposing a proprietary development environment, the Vitis platform plugs into common software developer tools and utilizes a rich set of optimized open source libraries, enabling developers to focus on their algorithms.

Vitis is separate to the Vivado® Design Suite, which will still be supported for those who want to program using hardware code, but the new platform can also boost the productivity of hardware developers by packaging hardware modules as software-callable functions.

@XilinxEMEA @XilinxInc @NeeshamPR

Machine vision programming upgrade!

The release of CVB 2019 introduces new APIs to provide an innovative way of developing machine vision solutions with Common Vision Blox, together with an impressive range of new tools. These tools provide functionality for hyperspectral and polarisation imaging, as well as OPC UA machine to machine communication capability for Industry 4.0 requirements. In addition it is now possible to develop machine learning solutions on embedded platforms. Object recognition speeds have been greatly increased, as have video sequence recording speeds.

CVB Image Manager and CameraSuite 2019 feature three new object-oriented APIs, supporting C++, .NET and Python. These APIs make getting started with Common Vision Blox significantly easier and help eliminate some of the most common programming issues in lifetime and memory management. Python support in particular brings the power and speed of CVB to a new group of users who are used to quick results and easy programming. The new APIs are compatible with the existing CVB API, meaning that users can build on existing applications without having to re-write their codebase. Linux support now covers Ubuntu 18.04 as well as 16.04 on Intel platforms and ARM. CVB software protection (WIBU dongles and CameraSuite licence) is also now working on ARM.

The CVB Foundation Package 2019 now benefits from a communication framework for Industry 4.0 (OPC UA) and Polarisation functionality as well as improvements to the speed and stability of 3D calibration in Metric. The OPC UA framework allows OPC UA server and client functionality. It is useful for machine-to-machine communications between vision systems and robots or PLCs, for example and is an integral part of an Industry 4.0 connected factory. Polarization is a full toolbox to get the most from the polarisation cameras. It allows easy access to the data from the polarisation sensors from Teledyne DALSA and Sony (used in many camera families). Everything from simple ‘de-mosaicing’ to ‘minimum reflection images’ to Stokes’ parameters and the angle/degree of polarisation can be handled, enabling reflectivity and surface-normal calculations to be made for applications in a wide range of industries.

CVB Spectral is a completely new tool to help industrial users harness the power of hyperspectral imaging for scientific, wavelength-based analysis. CVB Spectral is a complete toolbox for acquiring and preparing hyperspectral data from hyperspectral cameras and ENVI files so that traditional image processing tools can be used on the results. A hyperspectral data-cube, which can also be acquired, saved and loaded using CVB Spectral, can be corrected for optical and lighting effects to create wavelength-correct RGB or LAB colour data. This gives real area colorimetry information far more accurately than can be achieved with 3-chip cameras. The data-cube can also be sliced to produce useful 2D images for further processing. Typically these might be (x, wavelength) or (y,wavelength) at a certain x or y value.

CVB 2019 also contains some significant updates to existing tools. Recognising the importance of embedded vision and machine learning as key machine vision themes, the CVB Polimago machine learning tool is now available for Linux on Intel and ARM platforms. A raw recording method has been added to CVB Movie. This makes full use of the speed of the disks and the data-formats of the camera to allow recording speeds of gigabytes per second. In addition, CUDA support has been added to the 64-bit Windows version of CVB ShapeFinder. This means that with the right GPU hardware it is possible to increase search speed by 250%. An NVidia Jetson version is also available on request.

#PAuto @stemmerimaging

Software platform for developers.

Xilinx has announced Vitis™ (pronounced Vī-tis), a unified software platform that enables a broad new range of developers  to take advantage of the power of hardware adaptability. 

Five years and a total of 1,000 man years in the making, the Vitis unified software platform automatically tailors the Xilinx hardware architecture to the software or algorithmic code without the need for hardware expertise. Rather than imposing a proprietary development environment, the Vitis platform plugs into common software developer tools and utilizes a rich set of optimized open source libraries, enabling developers to focus on their algorithms. Vitis is separate to the Vivado™ Design Suite, which will still be supported for those who want to program using hardware code, but Vitis can also boost the productivity of hardware developers by packaging hardware modules as software-callable functions.

With exponentially increasing compute needs, engineers and scientists are often limited by the fixed nature of silicon,” said Victor Peng, president and chief executive officer, Xilinx. “Xilinx has created a singular environment that enables programmers and engineers from all disciplines to co-develop and optimize both their hardware and software, using the tools and frameworks they already know and understand. This means that they can adapt their hardware architecture to their application without the need for new silicon.”

The VITIS Stack
The Vitis platform is built on a stack-based architecture that plugs seamlessly into open-source standard development systems and build environments, but most importantly, it includes a rich set of standard libraries.

The base layer is the Vitis target platform, which includes a board and preprogrammed I/O. The second layer, called the Vitis core development kit, encompasses the open-source Xilinx runtime library to manage the data movement between different domains, including the subsystems, the AI Engine in the forthcoming Versal ACAP™, as well as an external host, if required. This layer also includes the core development tools such as compilers, analyzers and debuggers. While Xilinx provides a world-class design environment, these tools are designed to integrate seamlessly with industry-standard build systems and development environments.

In the third layer are more than 400 optimized and open-source applications across eight Vitis libraries. These include the Vitis Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (BLAS) library, the Vitis Solver library, the Vitis Security library, the Vitis Vision library, the Vitis Data Compression library, the Vitis Quantitative Finance library, the Vitis Database library and the Vitis AI library. These enable software developers to call pre-accelerated functions using a standard application programming interface (API).

VITIS AI and domain-specific architectures.
The fourth and most game-changing element of the platform is Vitis AI, which integrates a domain-specific architecture (DSA). The DSA configures Xilinx hardware to be optimized and programmed using industry-leading frameworks like TensorFlow and Caffe. Vitis AI provides the tools to optimize, compress and compile trained AI models running on a Xilinx device in about one minute. It also delivers specialized APIs for deployment from edge to cloud, all with best-in-class inference performance and efficiency. Xilinx will soon be releasing another DSA, called Vitis Video, to enable video encoding directly from FFmpeg for the same, ultra-simple, highly powerful end-to-end solution. DSAs available from partner companies include Illumina, which integrates with GATK for genome analysis, and BlackLynx, which integrates with ElasticSearch for big data analytics, along with proprietary DSAs that are currently being utilized by our customers.

VITIS developer site
Xilinx also today announced it has launched a developer site that provides easy access to examples, tutorials and documentation, as well as a space to connect the Vitis developer community. It will be managed by Xilinx and Vitis experts and enthusiasts, and will provide valuable information on the latest Vitis updates, tips and tricks.

Availability
The Vitis unified software platform—which empowers software developers with the efficiency of application-specific hardware architecture generated automatically from their software code, without new silicon—will be available for download for free next month. It is fully compatible with most Xilinx FPGAs, SoCs and MPSoCs released within the last decade. Versal ACAP support is available in early access and will be generally available in second quarter of 2020.

#PAuto @XilinxInc @NeeshamPR

Development and tuning of plant digital twins.

Enhancements to Mimic™ Simulation Software make it possible to simulate new process reactions and enhance safety checks for plant personnel training

A new release of Emerson’s Mimic™ Simulation Software makes it easier for plants to develop a more accurate digital twin. New modelling capabilities, usability enhancements and tuning options will help engineers more easily create, modify and integrate dynamic simulations for process improvements across the plant lifecycle.

The development of digital simulations of large projects can quickly get complex. Having to manually navigate through individual streams to tune factors such as temperature, pressure and flow on each process element of a simulated plant asset makes changing models time-consuming. Moreover, changing the format in which this data is collected used to mean taking the simulated process offline. New online stream-flow views in the latest release of Mimic significantly speed engineering changes. Users can quickly see all process elements in a single table with changeable parameters, making it possible to view and tune entire processes from front to back – all while keeping the simulated processes online.

The company has upgraded Mimic Advanced Modelling Objects with new blocks and objects to improve simulation – making simulation design easier for a wide range of industries, including oil and gas, liquefied natural gas, refining and petrochemical. Advanced Modelling Objects provide rigorous first-principles – dynamic models of plant unit operations such as those performed by separators, compressors, heat exchangers, valves, turbines, evaporators and more. Plate and frame heat exchanger and three-phase flash vapour-liquid-liquid equilibrium (VLLE) separation objects are now available, as are plug flow reactor objects that reduce the engineering time and complexity of model development for continuous processes in the chemical and hydrocarbon industries.

Organisations can also use new, simpler reaction modelling to more easily simulate reactions in a vessel. These new models offer increased flexibility in the use of reactions in design to automation engineers and organisations such as those in the specialty chemical and life sciences industries, which commonly use such medium-fidelity simulations. Users can create simplified reactions in engineering design – without the need for complex or private reaction data, or a background in kinetics and thermodynamics – to achieve desired results, such as the impact of a reaction on pH. The models also allow for faster simulation implementation because reproduction of complex chemical reactions is not necessary.

For plants that rely on standard operating procedures (SOP) to ensure safety and success in critical procedures such as start-up and shutdown, Mimic provides enhanced scoring features for training simulations. Trainers can modify scoring to prioritise actions that are critical in any SOP to ensure that all steps are properly completed in the correct order every time.

Mimic is now natively integrated with AspenTech’s HYSYS® Simulation Software, providing control platform integration and training functionality to the HYSYS simulation – making building and maintaining an operations digital twin much easier for the thousands of organisations already using AspenTech’s HYSYS software.

Simple, low cost means of integrating MiniPID sensors.

Increasing demand from the global heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), agricultural and general manufacturing industries for measurement of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) has led Ion Science to launch a high performance Sensor Development Kit (SDK).

Comprising integration and sensor printed circuit boards (PCBs), the new Sensor Development Kit facilitates simple, low cost integration of Ion Science’s well proven MiniPID sensors into existing OEM products across a diverse range of applications.

Duncan Johns, Managing Director at Ion Science comments: “For OEMs and systems integrators, the Ion Science Sensor Development Kit is the simplest, quickest and most flexible way to incorporate VOC monitoring into new and existing gas detection applications.

“They will be able to add PID technology to their systems at a relatively low investment cost. This will reduce their expenditure on development programmes.”

Due to its small size and number of interfaces, the Sensor Development Kit will enable OEMs to easily incorporate the company’s MiniPID technology into their systems and applications that require the sensitivity of photoionisation detectors (PIDs) but without significant investment in engineering and R&D.

A low cost alternative to fixed and portable gas detection systems, the Sensor Development Kit will be supplied ready for immediate integration. This allows engineers who need to measure VOCs as part of air filtration or fume extraction, for example, deliver their solution to market in a shorter time frame. The MiniPID sensor and integration boards handle the intricacies of PIDs reducing the need for design and development.

Coupled with the company’s market leading MiniPID technology, the Sensor Development Kit provides real time, highly accurate data. Plus it offers industry standard protocols and interfaces for seamless connectivity.

The integration board provides data logging as well as flexible 4-20mA input and Modbus RTU output for connection to PLCs, building management systems (BMS) and other equipment for rapid prototyping and product development.

Having been developed for OEMs, the target markets for the Sensor Development Kit are likely to vary greatly. However, there has been growing demand for VOC monitoring from the HVAC industry with BMS manufacturers increasingly likely to integrate it into their systems to check room pollution levels.

In most modern commercial buildings, there are relatively few indoor sources of inorganic gaseous pollutants and the primary indoor generated airborne pollutants affected by ventilation are particles and VOCs.

The existing particle filters in building HVAC systems remove indoor generated particles using far less energy than ventilation. To complement particle filtration, effective and energy efficient air cleaning methods are needed for VOCs.

Recent studies have tested granular activated carbon (GAC) filters for VOC removal in non-industrial buildings and have proposed test methods to evaluate the performance of such air cleaning technologies for reduction in ventilation. Similar to GAC, activated carbon fiber filters (ACF) can be implemented to efficiently remove VOCs from indoor air.

As a result, low power PID sensors giving a continuous reading positioned pre and post filter screen will allow effective break through monitoring, filter replacements and increased ventilation system efficiency.

@ionscience #PAuto #OEM @elhcomms

Leveraging for IIot!

Yokogawa has established a new division known as the Architecture Development Division California: an organisation that is dedicated to the development of architecture for the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). This division commenced operations on the 1st November 2016.

To improve operational efficiency and productivity by using the IIoT, a robust and flexible architecture is required. For this purpose, Yokogawa has set up the Architecture Development Division California to pursue the development of core technologies. The new division will function as a unit of Yokogawa’s Marketing Headquarters’ Business Development Center, and will keep up with the new technologies being developed every day in the IIoT sector and facilitate close co-ordination with partner companies.

The new division is based on the West Coast of the United States, which is a centre of research and development activity for numerous technology firms. The new division is staffed by engineers from Yokogawa who have an extensive knowledge of Yokogawa systems and services, and locally recruited engineers who are conversant in a range of IT fields. To start with, the division is located at the engineering office of a partner company, and it is scheduled to open its own office in April 2017.

The division will later add functions for planning services that use the IIoT and cloud computing, and it is expected that the number of staff will be increased to around 50 over the next five years. With this new division, Yokogawa will accelerate its development of cutting-edge IIoT architecture with the aim of offering its customers safer and more user-friendly solutions.

@YokogawaIA #PAuto #IoT

Making it simple to create IoT devices.

The new Wubby platform simplifies the development of IoT and Smart Home devices and systems by providing a programming environment that supports Python code execution directly in the microcontroller of the device. This allows a broader developer audience to create new everyday objects because of the popularity of Python.

Wubby (pronounced Wha-bee - who would have guessed?) is the first platform that truly separates hardware from software, abstracting the hardware and allowing the developers to contribute by writing simple python scripts, rather having to deploy the whole device image. What iOS and Android have been for the mobile phone market, Wubby is for IoT devices.

At the core of this platform is the Wubby VM, that runs in the heart of an everyday object, the microcontroller. Its main duty is simple, to provide a hardware agnostic environment for the creation of interoperable applications inside each everyday object. Wubby VM is accompanied by the following components - Wubby IDE is a platform agnostic development environment for configuration, debugging and simulation of everyday objects; Wubby Cloud is a collection of protocols and web services for application deployment and backend device management; Wubby Client is the main tool for user interaction with everyday objects including managing them and installing/updating new apps.

“With years of successful experience developing products for the IoT market, we believe we have solved many of the problems that limit the IoT vision from being fully realized,” says Dimitris Leonardos, CEO of Wubby. “Wubby lets everyday objects quickly connect to each other by infusing them with intelligence, while making the whole process EASY. Conventional ways seem to not work - this is why we invented Wubby.”

• Wubby was created in 2015 as a spin-off of Econais. Econais had been in the IoT market since 2010 and had developed a number of Wi-Fi modules with very unique characteristics (smallest size, lowest power consumption, complete software, etc.) compared to any other competitive solutions in the market.

@wubbyio #Pauto #Smart #IoT

Development kit offers introduction to RFID systems.

Harting have introduced a new introductory kit for engineers who are looking to implement RFID solutions.

Designed specifically to help new users understand the ease and flexibility of configuring RFID solutions, the development kit contains everything they need to get started. Potential users can configure their own applications, as well as familiarising themselves with the functionality and terminology used.

Hardware supplied with the kit includes Harting's Ha-VIS RF-R200 RFID Reader with PoE (Power over Ethernet) connectivity, the RF-R200 desktop power supply, Ha-VIS FT89 small RFID transponders (50 pieces), a Ha-VIS LOCFIELD antenna (0.3 m active length, 0.6 m total length), and a 1 m Ethernet patch cable. These are supported by the relevant data sheets, the RF-R200 user manual, and the Ha-VIS configurator tool.

Harting's RFID range is fully integrated to provide a complete solution from a single source, suitable for use in almost any industrial application that requires a rugged and reliable RFID system. Designed to work on metal surfaces for maximum performance, Harting's RFID solutions have an extended temperature range from -25°C to +85°C and are compliant with GS1 EPC ALE 1.1.

The Harting RFID product portfolio provides long read range capabilities with 50G shock resistance, along with the opportunity of a tailored reading zone with the unique Harting LOCFIELD antenna.

 @harting  #RFID #PAuto 

Modern .NET interface for developing applications that control and communicate with control systems.

Industrial automation manufacturer Opto 22 has announced its new .NET Controller Software Development Kit (SDK) for writing custom Microsoft Windows software applications that communicate directly with Opto 22 SNAP PAC controllers. This new SDK is well suited for machine builders, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and others who integrate custom applications with Opto 22 control systems. The .NET Controller SDK for SNAP PAC supports modern .NET frameworks and Visual Studio environments, which reduces the time and cost of software development and testing.

Developers use the .NET Controller SDK for SNAP PAC to build software applications that directly access the control program, or “strategy,” running on a SNAP PAC controller. Applications can read from and write to integer, float, and string variables and tables, as well as analog and discrete input and output points.

Steve Grudzinski, electronic systems engineer at optical components manufacturer Optiforms, uses the .NET Controller SDK in a precise plating process that must be tailored for each part. A Visual Basic software application accomplishes this by exchanging data between an inventory system, a SQL database, and a SNAP PAC control system. In the process, individually barcoded parts are first identified using laser scanners. For each part, plating requirements and corresponding equipment settings are pulled from the SQL database. Equipment settings are then sent to the SNAP PAC control system which adjusts the plating equipment as required.

More Communication Options
The .NET Controller SDK for SNAP PAC joins another Opto 22 resource for developers, the .NET OptoMMP SDK for SNAP I/O, which lets developers quickly create custom applications for use with Opto 22 I/O products such as SNAP Ethernet I/O. Applications built with the .NET OptoMMP SDK provide direct I/O communications with SNAP I/O “brains” (I/O processors) that support the OptoMMP protocol, while the .NET Controller SDK can directly access a strategy or control program running on a SNAP PAC controller.

Requirements and Availability

The .NET Controller SDK for SNAP PAC is compatible with Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (32-bit & 64-bit), Windows 8.1 Professional (32-bit & 64-bit), and Windows Server 2012 R2. The SDK supports Microsoft's .NET frameworks 4.0 through 4.5 and Visual Studio 2010-2013, includes sample .NET code and comprehensive documentation for packages and classes, and is available as a 100% managed DLL. The .NET Controller SDK for SNAP PAC is available now and can be downloaded free of charge from the Opto 22 website here!

System-wide automation development software.

The speed and efficiency of industrial control and machinery automation projects is enhanced significantly with a major new release of ABB's integrated development toolsuite.

Automation Builder 1.1 provides an integrated development environment for solutions using the spectrum of automation components - including PLCs and safety PLCs, motion controllers, drives, robots and HMIs - substantially reducing software complexity and cutting time to market and cost of ownership.

"Software complexity is the number one project issue today for most automation OEMs and system integrators. Automation Builder gives automation developers and owners the means to simplify control engineering and standardize on a single development platform for all projects - regardless of scale," says Armin Wallnhoefer of ABB.

Among many new features, the latest release of ABB's software extends the data exchange capabilities with electrical planning and engineering software, with a new bi-directional interface to the widely-used EPLAN Electric P8. Electrical automation and PLC design data may be imported, modified and transferred back to the electrical CAD environment - eliminating any need to manually enter data and thereby ensuring synchronization of signal identification between the two software environments.

The release now includes a comparison function that allows engineers to see what might have changed since they last looked at a project, and the ability to use profiles of previous development tool versions for compatibility.

Support for new hardware includes the ability to program the latest member of the well-known AC500 PLC family - the PM595 CPU - programming ACS880 IEC61131-3 programmable drives and the DCT 880 thyristor power controller, and developing motion control systems with ABB's new MotiFlex e180 servo drives or the ACS580 general-purpose drive.

Another important new element of the software is the introduction of an easy-to-use download and licensing system. ABB offers three licensing options: a basic version suitable for first time PLC users and engineers working on smaller-scale automation, motion and drive projects - this is available at no cost; a standard version which supports integrated engineering of advanced and complex systems including the use of safety PLCs; and a premium version.

The premium version incorporates C/C+ programming tools, E-CAD interfaces and other high level features for optimal productivity and easy collaboration, and simpler management of engineering data on large-scale projects involving thousands of I/O points.

With Automation Builder 1.1, users may also automatically update the suite of software tools to the latest versions using a 'one click' mechanism, and a single license covers all of the software packages included.

ABB has also introduced many usability improvements to further enhance the user’s productivity. These include simplified drop-down menus, drag-and-drop features on the object tree, an improved device repository with search and filter functions, a powerful list editor for AC500 I/O mapping, and a re-worked help system - to name a few.

Software development is the most expensive element of the vast majority of automation projects. By providing a unified development environment for the complete scope of automation projects, ABB is helping application experts, software and hardware engineers to focus their time and effort purely on developing the application, and not waste time on the myriad of interfacing issues that can arise when building solutions using many different types of automation devices. ABB estimates that the Automation Builder environment can reduce development engineering effort by around 30% for medium complexity projects, and deliver even higher savings on large-scale projects! This is particularly the case for projects involving many different types of automation components.

Automation Builder provides powerful PLC development resources in the form of the standards-compliant IEC 61131-3 development environment, and ABB's Panel Builder tool for creating HMIs. The software suite also includes tools for configuring and programming the latest generation of ABB’s safety PLCs - the AC500-S family - the RobotStudio tool for simulating and programming ABB robot applications, and the Mint WorkBench tool with its pre-built and tested libraries for programming ABB’s servo drives.

Taking concept to hardware faster!

National Instruments has announced LabWindows/CVI 2013, a proven ANSI C integrated development environment (IDE) that features a new industry-standard optimising compiler and the OpenMP parallel programming API. These key enhancements help developers improve application performance without rewriting their code. LabWindows/CVI is specially designed for test and measurement with built-in libraries for hardware communication and signal processing to simplify engineering application development. For more than 25 years, C developers have relied on LabWindows/CVI to create robust, high-performance applications for the military, aerospace, telecommunications and automotive industries.

LabWindows/CVI Developer Newsletter

“The LabWindows/CVI IDE has become a critical component of our automated test development, simplifying C programming with built-in engineering libraries and saving us at least one week of development for every release,” said Klaus Riedl, XOn Software GmbH. “With the LabWindows/CVI 2013 compiler upgrade, our compile time has decreased while performance increased and we have seen a big impact on our large applications.”

The new optimising compiler, based on the industry-standard low-level virtual machine (LLVM) infrastructure, generates code that runs up to 60% faster than before. With the portable and scalable OpenMP API, engineers can easily create applications that execute on multiple threads. The updated build system and debugger reduces time spent building large projects and locating hard-to-find bugs and memory leaks. LabWindows/CVI 2013 helps developers complete projects under deadline with tools that automate common tasks such as code formatting, generating callbacks and profiling execution speed.

The latest version of LabWindows/CVI also incorporates 11 feature requests from the thriving community of LabWindows/CVI users. These additions include improved function navigation in source code, virtual subfolders in the project tree and graph plot transparency.