Security Must Cover Every Single Endpoint Device, Through the Entire Lifecycle

Efficiency, Automation, and Enhanced Security and Safety Across Industries Despite surging interest in industrial robotics, fundamental challenges still exist when trying to perform business operations and automate workflows across hybrid network environments and disparate systems. But recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) combined with new communication technologies, including 5G, help integrate robotics into software-defined infrastructures as part of the full-scale digital transformation of organizations. This confluence of technologies creates abundant opportunities for factory automation, transportation breakthroughs, and unprecedented efficiency. Expanding the range of use cases for robotics in Industrial IoT (IIoT) environments requires resolving long-standing technical roadblocks. This includes the challenge of integrating diverse components across heterogeneous networks; employing machine learning to build and operate intelligent systems that adapt to workflows; and implementing responsive, low-latency communication services to interact with robotics systems in real time. The fourth industrial revolution, popularly known as Industry 4.0, is driven by digital transformation, high-speed connectivity, lightning-fast communications, IIoT best practices, and AI technologies. These solutions are predicted to increase operation costs savings by 8.5%,2 according to ABI Research and Ericsson. Those organizations that embrace the empowering technologies are well positioned to gain the benefits conferred: organization-wide cost savings, greater agility in software development and deployment, more complete integration with existing business units and systems, and enhanced efficiencies across all areas of business operations.

Delivering Reliability, Safety, and Security From the Wright brothers’ first flight off the sands of Kitty Hawk to supersonic jets and hypersonic vehicles, the aerospace industry has steadily advanced from one innovative technology to another. Over the years, experts have matured and leveraged new technologies and techniques to enable the development of air vehicles that would meet new flying challenges. Today, one of the most exciting opportunities is the application of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles and other innovative propulsion and flight technologies to realize advanced/urban air mobility (AAM/UAM) in support of dual-use commercial and military missions. To bring advanced eVTOL technology and innovation to the market faster and to meet AAM challenges, there must a collaboration between aerospace companies, software innovators, and government regulation entities. Airspace management frameworks must evolve intelligently for the safe operation of eVTOL aircraft to support the commercial eVTOL industry and bring its players together to enable safety, security standards, and more. Wind River®, a software solutions leader in the aerospace and defense market, is committed to helping bring eVTOL to reality with its full portfolio of software products that deliver proven reliability, safety, and security to flight technology. In this white paper, Wind River will focus on meeting the challenges of the technology, solutions, and innovations that are required to make the next generation of AAM/UAM systems a reality.

Strategies to Capitalize on Increasingly Software-Intensive Flight Systems Shifting functionality of onboard aviation systems to software rather than using traditional hardware approaches makes them more cost-efficient, flexible, and future ready. Intelligent edge technologies are essential to take full advantage of this transition. Longevity is critical to the cost-effectiveness of civilian and military aviation systems. To extend their lifespans, it must be possible to update those systems as needed, both to maintain and to add functionality. The inherently more dynamic nature of software-based versus hardware-based systems supports continuous updates and system modernization. As a result, the level of software-defined functionality in aviation systems has grown steadily over time. Maintenance based on installing code rather than system boards is simpler and more costeffective, which makes incremental changes possible for more granular control and heightened cyber resiliency.

Tools and solutions from Wind River help speed robotics development at the intelligent edge, combining expertise in 5G networking, container technology, embedded solutions running on a real-time...

2020 was the “Annus Horribilis” for manufacturers, whose operations and supply chains have been severely disrupted by the COVID-19 global pandemic. What has been the impact of this disruption on...