Embedded Systems

Creating a robot which can navigate autonomously in confusing environments is the focus of a research project at the University of Wales. A researcher is teaching a robot to learn its way around an environment using its own memory. “The aim is for it to navigate in an environment using a reduced set of sensors and history,” said Dr Torbjorn ...

Micron Technology has produced a camera chip for cars, which includes a mixer to add computer-generated overlays to images. “The MT9V125 is designed to generate NTSC or PAL with the minimum number of additional components,” August Will, Micron’s European image sensor manager, told Electronics Weekly. The device is designed for side-view mirror replacement and reversing, for either ‘scene viewing’ or ...

After a year of growth following the addition of Linux to its device operating system portfolio, Wind River is focusing on freeing up developers for more important work. The company’s upgrade to its Workbench 2.4 product can take over manual testing and failure diagnosis tasks. “Most developers would prefer to develop and not test code,” said John Fanelli, v-p of product ...

Cambridge Positioning Systems (CPS) claims its Matrix location technology will be able to improve the location capabilities which will be offered by the European Galileo satellite system. “Here we have another satellite system and yet because of specific technical issues there’s still a need for a backup system – a helping hand from a cellular-based network – just to make ...

Nallatech has extended the performance of its FPGA-based computing range with a motherboard and expansion modules incorporating all the variants of Xilinx’s Virtex-4 family. According to Dr Malachy Devlin, chief technical officer at Nallatech, given the performance and I/O capabilities of the Virtex-4 FPGAs the company has created a range of peripheral subsystems to match their bandwidth and memory requirements. ...

Wireless sensor networks, with their ability to capture location-sensitive information where wired systems are impractical or costly, seem poised to take off in applications such as industrial control and building monitoring. However, their performance in these electrically noisy environments has been less than robust. Now Dust Networks claims it has solved that problem with a new mesh platform that provides ...

Software security is an increasingly critical issue in embedded system designs that are web-enabled, according to supplier of real-time operating systems Green Hills Software. Peter Hoogenboom of Green Hills told the Micro Developer Forum at the Embedded Systems Show in Birmingham this week that the problems of software security in embedded computing designs is compounded when systems are connected to ...

Southampton-based Quantum Research has developed a capacitive touch screen technology that eliminates many traditional drawbacks, making it suitable for mobile phone use, claims the firm. “We have got designs on-going with the top three mobile phone companies,” Quantum CEO Hal Philip told Electronics Weekly. The firm already has capacitance measuring intellectual property. Its patented charge transfer technique is used in ...

Debugging with hardware trace data means software engineers can achieve faster time to market and at lower cost, says Michael Lindahl of Green Hills As the complexity of embedded systems continues to increase, there is a need for better debugging tools to speed development time and lower development cost. One technology that is becoming more and more popular to help ...

Embedded system designers need to understand the implications of multi-processor technologies and IP security, according to suppliers speaking to Electronics Weekly ahead of an upcoming UK design conference. In one of the keynote presentations in the Embedded Micro Developer Forum at next week’s Embedded Systems Show in Birmingham, Simon Holland, technical director for Intel’s European sales and marketing group, will ...