FORT helps robot builders and users to increase productivity and accelerate innovation. Using the FoundriesFactory platform, FORT was able to hit the ground running and speed their time to certification-ready hardware by around 5 months.
Industry challenges
Connected, smart embedded systems are prevalent in our personal and working lives, from grocery delivery droids to smart agriculture machines to mission critical infrastructure. The challenge to adoption is providing device and machine builders, and ultimately their downstream customers, with the ability to deliver safe, secure and updatable systems. Providing and establishing trust in the device operation and its operational system will be the driving factor to success in this market.
Company overview
FORT helps robot builders and users to increase productivity and accelerate innovation. Their Robotics Control Platform secures robots and maximizes human safety by delivering trusted control across any network.
FORT's Endpoint Controller brings safe, secure, dynamic wireless control to any machine. The Endpoint Controller makes it possible to send and receive trusted safety commands over a variety of wireless networks. It can be mounted to a machine or machine attachment for remote control. It can also be integrated with input devices to send up to two different safety commands such as e-stop, crawl, rest, fire response, etc. One Endpoint Controller can communicate with up to 30 Endpoint Controller-equipped machines simultaneously.
Customer pain points
FORT Robotics chose a Linux® based approach for their development. Linux is recognized for its proven operational stability, broad functionality, wide market adoption and strong focus on security. Critical functions are not limited to any one vendor’s proprietary operating system.
FORT Robotics created a best-of-breed hardware platform from multiple vendors including STMicroelectronics (STM) and NXP Semiconductors (NXP). With ST Linux already booted on their chosen hardware board, the team just needed integration of the NXP SE050 secure element with their STMicro MPU platform. However, with no easy, clear, single point Linux that was out-of-the-box, they anticipated the potentially complex integration of different software tooling, and crypto support. Furthermore, they saw the possibility of placing themselves in an unintended vendor lock-in, depending on their chosen hardware. If the hardware changed it would not be a simple modification; it would be back to the drawing board.
Added to these challenges, the pressure was on to move fast in order to hit development schedules, react to customer and competitor dynamics, and meet critical business milestones.
Solution
The FoundriesFactory™ cloud-native DevSecOps platform combines with the Foundries.io maintained, open source Linux microPlatform (LmP) operating system to form a complete platform, with security measures in place by default. The LmP security-hardened Yocto built distribution is cross-hardware and freely available; it provided the required single point for Linux.
Bringing together the FoundriesFactory platform and LmP along with an STMicroelectronics STM32MP1 EVK and an NXP EdgeLock SE050 module gave FORT Robotics a quick route to developing their target applications and services, while maintaining flexibility without vendor lock-in.
The FORT Robotics and Foundries.io teams moved fast, mapping out the journey from kernel development to production, all the way through to including setting up a provisioning process on the SDM.
Why FoundriesFactory
FORT Robotics’ evaluation included a review of secure boot, kernel maintenance and application software update services. Foundries.io was selected as the provider of choice for multiple reasons, including:
- A ready-made Linux-based platform as the foundation for future-proofing and full flexibility without compromising security
- A cloud-based development and delivery environment simplifying build, test and collaboration between teams and ready for immediate Root of Trust installation
- Integration work taken care of whereby FORT Robotics owns and controls all their code while Foundries.io maintains the STM and NXP secure element code
- Simultaneous development on the STM EVK and various target hardware, enabling seamless transition of all application work without loss of time
- Speed of delivery, taking just 8 weeks from project start to STM-based target hardware along with the SE050 secure element being certification-ready, including the capacity to establish immutable audit data
- Ongoing access to additional Foundries.io support and expertise, including documentation and customized scripts
Outcomes
FORT Robotics was able to hit the ground running and speed their time to certification-ready hardware by around 5 months. Best-in-class was a given and cost savings were immediately evident, added to downstream savings through technical re-use.
“It’s the combination that makes it work: open source tools integrating easily with chosen hardware and tooling, giving us a quick, easy and secure route to market and ensuring we’re always in complete control,” Ryan Barnett, Senior Manager Platform, FORT Robotics.
Find out more about FORT on their web site and in this Endpoint Controller summary video.
To learn more about the FoundriesFactory platform, book a free call.