Month: May 2020

Dataset speeds machine vision testing of automotive thermal sensors

FLIR Systems’ European thermal imaging regional dataset is now available. It is the third in a series of thermal imaging datasets for machine vision testing.

Designed to help researchers, developers and auto manufacturers enhance and accelerate work on safety, advanced driver assistance-systems (ADAS), automatic emergency braking (AEB) and autonomous vehicle (AV) systems, the dataset features thousands of annotated thermal images of daytime, nighttime and various weather scenarios from six cities across Europe.

The new European regional dataset includes image annotations captured in London, Paris, Madrid, and Toledo, Granada and Malaga in Spain. Collected with FLIR thermal and RGB cameras to identify various attributes of city landscapes, the dataset contains a total of 14,353 annotated thermal images to increase testing and evolving convolutional neural networks (CNN). The images were taken in a variety of driving environments in each city, including various lighting and weather conditions.

Similar to the previously released thermal imaging datasets for San Francisco, Calif. and Santa Barbara, Calif., the European dataset includes image annotations for cars, other vehicles types, people, bicycles and signs.

The two previous datasets have been downloaded 5,000 times and the new images and videos from the European dataset will be added to the growing library of available video and images to further speed up CNN training of thermal data. By incorporating the thermal dataset into automotive design and development, researchers and developers can develop more reliable systems due to thermal imaging’s ability to classify objectives.

“By expanding FLIR’s thermal machine vision dataset offerings to include major European cities, we are further enabling researchers and developers to jumpstart the use of thermal imaging to enhance automotive safety,” says Mike Walters, VP of product management, thermal and machine vision cameras at FLIR Systems. “To help make roads safer, the combination of thermal imaging and AI with visible light cameras, LIDAR, and radar, allows automakers to create more comprehensive and redundant systems for identifying and classifying roadway objects and pedestrians.”

With more than a decade of experience in the automotive industry, FLIR continues to develop and innovate an end-to-end approach to thermal in ADAS, AEB and AV systems. In addition to creating new machine vision datasets, there are more than 700,000 automotive-qualified FLIR thermal sensors in driver warning systems from automakers including General Motors, Volkswagen, and Mercedes-Benz.

FLIR’s testing has shown that thermal cameras can significantly improve the performance at night over current AEB systems that use radar and visible cameras which is especially valuable as most pedestrian accidents are at night. As a result of this testing and capability, FLIR is now currently working with several robotaxi companies, automotive manufacturers and tier-one suppliers such as Veoneer, to bring this capability to market for AEB and AV purposes.

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Services firm ISS partners with Haltian to build smart facilities

Facility services company ISS requires an Internet of Things (IoT) platform that is secure, reliable, and easily scaled and modified to customers’ needs. Finnish IoT and product development company Haltian has already been the main provider of IoT solutions for ISS Finland, and now the co-operation is to be extended globally.

ISS aims to take advantage of new technologies and digitalisation to make the facilities they manage smarter, more user friendly and efficient. IoT technologies are being adopted more and more in the facility service industry using data to drive more automated building systems.

For example, lighting and climate control and providing great experiences for building occupants. Haltian will serve as a global partner in providing ISS with reliable and scalable IoT solutions that compliment ISS vision for facility services.

Trust is an important factor in digital solutions

In ISS, all products go through an external review process, which includes the review of e.g. product design, environmental conditions and security. Sam Lavers, global head of Digital Excellence & IoT, ISS Group says, “At ISS we set a high standard for our IoT partners in order to maintain safe and secure delivery of device data into our solutions.

We were delighted that Haltian were willing and capable of meeting these requirements and look forward to boosting our digitalisation portfolio with Haltian as an ISS partner” Haltian’s Thingsee IoT solution platform is a data collection hub which offers an easy, secure and cost-effective way for businesses and enterprises to digitise their operations.

Jari Tiirikainen, head of Digital Excellence, ISS Finland says, “For ISS the most important thing in digitalisation is to create an ecosystem that includes partners who are agile, innovative and capable to adapt to the fast-changing pace of FM industry. Haltian has proved itself to be one of those partners”

Haltian’s sensors and IoT platform have been used for more than a year in ISS Finland, and now the cooperation will be expanded globally. “Our partnership with ISS will create new kind of facility services globally with the help of IoT solutions,” adds Haltian CEO Pasi Leipala. “Our goal is to make IoT easy for everyone and we are excited to help ISS bring digital solutions as part of their facility management services.”

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Telemetry and satellite communications solution for rail launched by Inmarsat

Inmarsat, a specialist in global, mobile satellite communications, has launched a new Rail Telemetry and Communications Solution for the global rail industry.

The solution provides real-time data transfer and push-to-talk (PTT) communications for rail operators working in remote areas across the globe, connecting drivers and railway staff to drive operational efficiencies and improve the overall safety of the railway. This builds on Inmarsat’s existing work with the rail sector.

Railways are more critical than ever in supporting the global movement of goods in remote areas. However; there are many challenges facing today’s railway operators, including optimising network capacity, carrying out vital maintenance work, improving health and safety and minimising the impact of adverse weather conditions.

These are exacerbated in large regions where sections of the railway pass through black spots – areas of minimal or zero cellular network coverage. As trains travel through these areas, railway staff are unable to communicate, or send and receive any data from trains to the control centre, leading to inefficiencies and potentially safety concerns.

Inmarsat’s Rail Telemetry and Communications Solution leverages its Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN), which offers industry-leading reliability of up to 99.9% uptime. Low form factor satellite terminals, such as the new Cobham EXPLORER 323, are mounted on locomotives providing real-time GPS, telemetry and PTT capabilities anywhere in the world.

This means control centres can efficiently and safely monitor and schedule the movement of locomotives, rolling stock and goods across an entire rail network, while enabling communications with crew wherever they are located.

Steven Tompkins, director of Sector Development at Inmarsat, comments: “Inmarsat’s new Rail Telemetry and Communications Solution builds on projects with leading rail operators in Latin America and development work with our hardware and service provider partners.

We are confident the solution provides the most reliable data and communications service for train companies, and will lead to a paradigm shift in the safety and efficiency of remote rail operations.”

An important feature of the solution is the integration with existing equipment on board. The Cobham PRISM PTT solution integrates easily into the locomotive’s existing radio, so the rail operator doesn’t have to get rid of their existing trusted equipment.

PRISM PTT, a service powered by Cobham SATCOM’s innovative PRISM (Private Routing & Intelligent System Management) technology enables the BGAN PTT Solution to switch between connectivity types such as UHF or VHF, 3G/4G and satellite making the solution cost-effective and easy to use. The switching process is unique in the market because it is completely seamless and offers an economical approach to voice communications.

“As well as being relied on to transfer critical data in real-time, Inmarsat’s Rail Telemetry and Communications Solution is unique in providing a PTT voice communication feature that can switch between connectivity types seamlessly, without any lag in reconnection,” continues Tompkins.

“This provides operators complete confidence that data will always be transferred, the latest technology on board will stay operational and voice communications with drivers and crew can be maintained wherever the train is located.”

Henrik Norrelykke, vice president, Global sales & marketing at Cobham adds, “Cobham SATCOM is excited to work with Inmarsat to launch the new Rail Telemetry and Communications Solution.

Utilising the Cobham EXPLORER Mobile Gateway, the PRISM PTT+ solution enables easy integration into any existing radio equipment, making it simple for organisations across a range of industries to upgrade their trusted 2-way radio capabilities.”

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Hardware-based detection and mitigation launched for automotive’s cybersecurity vulnerability

UltraSoC and Canis Automotive Labs announced a partnership that addresses one of the most serious cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the automotive industry. This, say the companies, is the lack of security features within the CAN bus, which is commonly used to interconnect in-vehicle systems such as brakes, steering, engine, airbags, door locks, and headlights.

The partnership between the two companies will yield hardware-based intrusion detection and mitigation techniques for common exploits on the CAN bus. These include automatic hardware anti-spoofing; defence against bit-level attacks such as the Bus-Off attack and bit-glitching; and resistance to denial of service (DoS) style attacks.

The collaboration centres on the deployment of Canis Labs’ CAN-HG technology, a new fully-compatible augmentation of the standard CAN bus protocol that includes bus guardian security features, and has the added benefit of being able to carry payloads twelve times larger than standard CAN frames.

When combined with UltraSoC’s semiconductor IP for detection and mitigation of cyber threats, CAN-HG allows designers to secure their CAN bus designs at the hardware level. The cybersecurity capabilities enabled by the collaboration employ fast bits within the CAN-HG augmented part of a CAN frame to add security information to CAN frames.

This can be used by UltraSoC’s protocol-aware monitoring hardware to identify and block suspicious or unauthorised traffic traveling over CAN. These new capabilities will be refined and proved for deployment as part of Secure-CAV: an ambitious project that seeks to improve the safety and security of tomorrow’s connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs).

Aileen Ryan, UltraSoC CSO, comments: “Automotive cybersecurity requires an ecosystem approach. We’re delighted to add Canis Labs to our list of partners working in this area, which already includes NSITEXE-DENSO and Agile Analog; as well as our partners in the Secure-CAV project, Copper Horse and the Universities of Coventry and Southampton.

Up to now the industry has been forced to use sticking plaster solutions to defend CAN interconnect, relying on software techniques or perimeter security. Incorporating Canis Labs’ innovative CAN-HG technology into UltraSoC’s products allows us to secure the vehicle ‘from the inside out’: within the underlying electronic hardware.”

Ken Tindell, Canis Labs’ CTO, adds: “The most effective way to protect a CAN bus from attacks is to deploy a hardware security device – or better still, use semiconductor IP to incorporate hardware protections into the underlying system.

We believe that the combination of UltraSoC and Canis Labs IP provides a robust solution to CAN security, which is one of the most pressing problems for any CAN bus user – whether they are in automotive, aerospace, or any other industry sector.”

CAN is a hugely successful interconnect protocol which emerged in the 1980s in response to the need for an efficient, lightweight interconnection method that could cope with the harsh environments found in vehicles. Today it remains a common choice not only in the automotive industry but also in industrial, cyberphysical and robotics applications, where safety is paramount. But while it is physically robust, CAN is almost entirely lacking in cybersecurity features.

Most existing approaches to CAN security are software-based, meaning that they are often unable to react quickly enough to prevent protocol-level attacks. Because it is hardware based, a joint Canis Labs / UltraSoC solution can react quickly enough to prevent an attack from completing. This has two implications.

First, many exploits rely on creating a “window of opportunity” during which the system is in a vulnerable or unknown state. A fast reaction time can eliminate this window and significantly improve the overall robustness of cybersecurity defenses.

Second, CAN bus is used in many cyberphysical systems, in which elapsed time equates to distance traveled. A faster response time therefore has significant benefits in terms of mitigating the physical consequences of an attempted intrusion, better protecting the safety of citizens and infrastructure.

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Two senior hires as Cradlepoint expands into Europe with new solutions to guide 5G path

A global specialist in cloud-delivered LTE and 5G wireless network edge solutions, Cradlepoint today announced its expansion into Europe with senior hires, investment in new teams and new product offerings.

The US-based company aims to build upon, a clear addressable wireless WAN (wide area network) market in Europe and the emergence of 5G networks. The company is reports it is now ready to truly ‘go global’ in 2020, winning more customers across Northern, Central and Southern Europe.

Evert Suur, previously head of channels for Northern Europe at Forescout, joins Cradlepoint as area director for Northern Europe. He brings to the role 25+ years of experience in the IT and networking industries and will be responsible for driving forward Cradlepoint’s go-to-market strategy in the Netherlands, Belgium and the Nordics.

Lorenzo Ruggiero also joins the company, as area director, this time for Southern Europe. Based in Milan, Lorenzo will lead customer satisfaction initiatives, partner relationships and revenue growth across Italy, Spain, France and Portugal. Ruggiero joins from Vodafone and previously worked at French software company, Infovista where he was in charge of leading the enterprise market proposition.

Lorenzo Ruggiero

There will be expansion and new hire announcements for Central Europe in the coming months.

In each region, a sales and support team will be built throughout 2020, with team leaders, sales engineers and business development executives being hired. Cradlepoint’s ‘go-to-market’ strategy in Europe will be driven through third parties and partner programmes in each geo, with the company actively recruiting partners across Europe as part of its expansion plan.

James Bristow, SVP EMEA, Cradlepoint comments, “We invented the wireless WAN/ Edge movement and lead the industry. This will grow to a US$5 billion (€4 billion) market in EMEA by 2025 – but now it’s time to establish our presence in Europe and tap into the growing demand for mobile, branch and IoT networks. We want to win more Fortune 500 companies in the year ahead and dominate the market as 5G infrastructure rolls out across the region.”

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, Cradlepoint has been rolling out new solutions to support the European market. The organisation has seen an increase in demand for products that can support pop-up healthcare environments, home working and retailers to onboard an influx of new staff quickly and securely. Some of its new product offerings include:

  • The E300 series enterprise router, which supports the increased performance and advanced LTE, Wi-Fi, security, and management requirements of high-traffic pop-up sites, including quarantine centres, small clinics, and treatment facilities
  • Expansion of vehicle solutions for the UK emergency services network: A new Gigabit-Class MC400 Modular Modem, which upgrades the IBR900 Mobile Router to being an ESN ‘Connect Critical Approved Solution’ for UK emergency services
  • A comprehensive portfolio of 5G solutions powered by the company’s NetCloud Service, built exclusively to meet the business imperatives of availability, interoperability, security, and manageability. The new portfolio of “5G for Business” solutions enables customers to deploy fast and reliable wireless business internet and wide-area networks (WANs).

Evert Suur

Bristow concludes, “We have responded rapidly to the needs of our customers in Europe during the COVID-19 crisis with best in-class products and solutions in the wireless WAN market. We are confident, that when we come through this crisis, the rise of high speed wireless 4G Gigabit LTE and 5G networks will present huge opportunities for enterprises to cut the wire and build better, more agile and manageable networks. A huge number of ideas, innovations and new companies will be born out of the 5G movement globally, and Cradlepoint is at the forefront of this change.”

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The post Two senior hires as Cradlepoint expands into Europe with new solutions to guide 5G path appeared first on IoT global network.

Two senior hires as Cradlepoint expands into Europe with new solutions to guide 5G path

A global specialist in cloud-delivered LTE and 5G wireless network edge solutions, Cradlepoint today announced its expansion into Europe with senior hires, investment in new teams and new product offerings.

The US-based company aims to build upon, a clear addressable wireless WAN (wide area network) market in Europe and the emergence of 5G networks. The company is reports it is now ready to truly ‘go global’ in 2020, winning more customers across Northern, Central and Southern Europe.

Evert Suur, previously head of channels for Northern Europe at Forescout, joins Cradlepoint as area director for Northern Europe. He brings to the role 25+ years of experience in the IT and networking industries and will be responsible for driving forward Cradlepoint’s go-to-market strategy in the Netherlands, Belgium and the Nordics.

Lorenzo Ruggiero also joins the company, as area director, this time for Southern Europe. Based in Milan, Lorenzo will lead customer satisfaction initiatives, partner relationships and revenue growth across Italy, Spain, France and Portugal. Ruggiero joins from Vodafone and previously worked at French software company, Infovista where he was in charge of leading the enterprise market proposition.

Lorenzo Ruggiero

There will be expansion and new hire announcements for Central Europe in the coming months.

In each region, a sales and support team will be built throughout 2020, with team leaders, sales engineers and business development executives being hired. Cradlepoint’s ‘go-to-market’ strategy in Europe will be driven through third parties and partner programmes in each geo, with the company actively recruiting partners across Europe as part of its expansion plan.

James Bristow, SVP EMEA, Cradlepoint comments, “We invented the wireless WAN/ Edge movement and lead the industry. This will grow to a US$5 billion (€4 billion) market in EMEA by 2025 – but now it’s time to establish our presence in Europe and tap into the growing demand for mobile, branch and IoT networks. We want to win more Fortune 500 companies in the year ahead and dominate the market as 5G infrastructure rolls out across the region.”

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, Cradlepoint has been rolling out new solutions to support the European market. The organisation has seen an increase in demand for products that can support pop-up healthcare environments, home working and retailers to onboard an influx of new staff quickly and securely. Some of its new product offerings include:

  • The E300 series enterprise router, which supports the increased performance and advanced LTE, Wi-Fi, security, and management requirements of high-traffic pop-up sites, including quarantine centres, small clinics, and treatment facilities
  • Expansion of vehicle solutions for the UK emergency services network: A new Gigabit-Class MC400 Modular Modem, which upgrades the IBR900 Mobile Router to being an ESN ‘Connect Critical Approved Solution’ for UK emergency services
  • A comprehensive portfolio of 5G solutions powered by the company’s NetCloud Service, built exclusively to meet the business imperatives of availability, interoperability, security, and manageability. The new portfolio of “5G for Business” solutions enables customers to deploy fast and reliable wireless business internet and wide-area networks (WANs).
Evert Suur

Bristow concludes, “We have responded rapidly to the needs of our customers in Europe during the COVID-19 crisis with best in-class products and solutions in the wireless WAN market. We are confident, that when we come through this crisis, the rise of high speed wireless 4G Gigabit LTE and 5G networks will present huge opportunities for enterprises to cut the wire and build better, more agile and manageable networks. A huge number of ideas, innovations and new companies will be born out of the 5G movement globally, and Cradlepoint is at the forefront of this change.”

Comment on this article below or via Twitter: @IoTNow_OR @jcIoTnow

The post Two senior hires as Cradlepoint expands into Europe with new solutions to guide 5G path appeared first on IoT Now Transport.

State of IoT: Digital transformation at-scale

Manufacturing has been one of the fastest-growing Internet of Things (IoT) adopters, experiencing some of the greatest levels of IoT investment last year, says Keith Higgins, VP of digital transformation, Rockwell Automation. According to IDC, discrete manufacturing US$119 billion (€107billion), process manufacturing $78 billion (€70 billion), transportation $71 billion (€64 billion), and utilities $61 billion (€55 billion) are spending the most on IoT solutions.

Moreover, GSMA Intelligence says industrial sectors of the economy are the driver of IoT, which will account for more than 50% of the installed base by 2025. Indeed, industrial firms have invested heavily in smart manufacturing projects to improve operations and create new value.

Although many industrial organisations now understand the power of data and analytics to improve enterprise-wide productivity and outcomes, scaling digital strategies is the next step to reach new results and benefits. As digital transformation projects reach the inflection point– here’s how companies can further evolve digitalisation strategies:

Implement comprehensive solutions

IoT is not a single technology but rather an accumulation of hardware, software, compute, etc. As such, organisations must adopt a holistic approach to scale projects and secure optimal ROI. Organisations can turn raw data into powerful insights when devices and systems are integrated and data is standardised, thus providing the full benefits of digital transformation.

Businesses digitally transforming their operations need a complete ecosystem to help them orchestrate and simplify technology deployments and quickly achieve results – from ground-level connected assets through network control systems to cloud computing capabilities. Organisations must implement a single source for services, solutions, and updates to the entire IoT ecosystem, or projects that leverage partnerships to create unified solutions that solve customer challenges.

Integrate information technology and operational technology

Operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) have proven to be much less effective when placed into silos. Connecting real-time and historic OT data from legacy systems with new layers of IT infrastructure delivers new levels of insight for better business decisions. Integration between OT and IT is the key to accelerating innovation and achieving productivity gains at scale.

As an example, in the auto industry, where a single unit may travel through plants in several countries before being fully assembled, integrated IT and OT allows production managers to maintain unified visibility as each component makes its way through the supply chain. Data from factory equipment is fed into IT systems that can analyse and predict how individual changes will impact overall production.

Additionally, on a factory floor, a machine temperature reading without historical data context provides no information to the OT team about the machine approaching a point of overheating, meaning events on that machine need to be redirected. Beyond providing continuous insights, the contextual OT data enables IT teams’ digital transformation initiatives across the organisation.

Double down on critical use cases

Enterprise organisations must prioritise use cases that are most critical to overall digital transformation success and deliver the highest ROI. While many use cases have been identified and put into production, the following four use cases have emerged as key drivers of successful digitisation at-scale:

Asset optimisation: Real-time asset health monitoring and predictive maintenance insights substantially reduce production downtime while maximising asset performance, utilisation, and useful life. Maintenance, equipment, and repair costs are reduced, while meantime to repair and first-time fix rates are improved.

Scalable production management: Comprehensive orchestration of enterprise systems and factory operations ensures efficient transformation of raw materials into finished goods. This includes maximising production forecasts, uptime and throughput, optimising production for changing recipes and operating conditions, providing high product quality, improving OEE KPIs, and more.

Keith Higgins

Real-time operational intelligence: Introducing real-time visibility, actionable insights, and powerful analytics into factory operations reduces costs and increases performance and efficiency. It also enables standardised KPIs to measure operational consistency and gains across multiple production lines and entire operations. Further benefits include reducing scrap and improving inventory turnover.

Digital workforce productivity: Skills shortages, labor costs, and rising production complexity are critical challenges all industrial organisations face today. Digital workforce productivity solutions, including augmented reality, ensures workers are adequately trained/re-trained, improve productivity and safety, and deliver substantial impact on labor costs and overall operational productivity.

Last year, the industry saw a 400% growth in industrial digital transformation projects moving into the post-implementation stage. As organisations move initiatives from project roll-out to continuous process improvement, scaling becomes more than a challenge to overcome – it becomes a major opportunity.

The author is Keith Higgins, VP of Digital Transformation, Rockwell Automation.

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