Smart Machines: Humans In, On and Out of the Loop
Connectivity Challenges for Intelligent Systems (and How to Solve Them)
Smart machines span many of the world’s largest and most complex applications, from sophisticated robots to autonomous vehicles to military defense systems and large-scale power grids. These systems are highly distributed, augmented with advanced edge intelligence, demanding high flexibility and scalability to cope with stringent requirements, not just to meet the current needs but also the future expansion and evolution. The level of autonomy of smart machines and systems can be described as manual, semi-autonomous and autonomous, commonly referred to as humans in, on and out of the loop.
In this seminar, we will share our own expertise in smart system design, showcase important productivity tools and software design approaches from selected partners and explore some of the important technical design considerations such as, the smart tools needed to design smart systems, scaling that doesn’t leave legacy systems behind, deploying and updating distributed applications, and how ROS 2 and the DDS standard pair up to accelerate robotics and autonomous systems development.
Join us for these technical discussions and a complementary lunch. You will gain a better understanding of autonomous systems challenges and solutions across all markets and RTI’s insights and recommended best practices for tackling the complex challenges of smart machines.
Guest Speakers:
Mark McBroom, Application Engineering Manager, MathWorks
Protima Banerjee, PhD, Adjunct Professor, Department of Computer Science, Rowan University
Featured Speakers and Guests
Bert Farabaugh
Director of Field Application Engineering, RTI
Bert Farabaugh is the Director of Field Applications Engineering at RTI, and in addition has been working as an FAE covering the Northeastern US and strategic accounts for over 15 years.
Starting off in developing robotic systems for 12 years at a few defense contractors, Bert developed a strong understanding of what it takes to create a real-time system. From 1998 through 2003, he further expanded his knowledge of real-time applications by working for Wind River, a leading provider of real-time operating systems.
Since starting at RTI in 2003, Bert has expanded his competence in real-time applications and distributed systems architecture design.
Mark McBroom
Application Engineering Manager, MathWorks
Mark McBroom is an application engineering manager at MathWorks leading a team that specializes in automatic code generation and validation from MATLAB and Simulink. He has been at MathWorks for 15 years and works in the regional office in Novi, Michigan. Prior to joining MathWorks, Mark developed embedded software applications in the automotive, aerospace and defense industries.
Protima Banerjee, PhD
Adjunct Professor, Department of Computer Science, Rowan University
Dr. Protima Banerjee has held technical and leadership positions at Lockheed Martin, Oracle, and Idea Integration designing and developing real-time distributed systems for government and commercial customers.
She holds a doctoral degree in Computer Science from Drexel University in the area of natural language processing. Protima has been involved in all aspects of the real-time system delivery from requirements analysis to system design to integration and test.
Her technology interests include real-time data management, semantic information integration and MLOps. She has developed and teaches graduate courses in Applied Data Science and Advanced Software Engineering (DevOps) at Rowan University.
Andy Krassowski
Field Application Engineer, RTI
Andy Krassowski is a Field Application Engineer at RTI. Andy has received a BSEE from WPI, as well as a M.S. CS from RPI. He has 39 years of mission-critical, high-performance systems design and implementation experience. He has prior experience in Process Control systems then 8-bit Embedded Systems, as well as Low latency message processing at Gari Software, Dow Jones, Aleri CEP (now SAS Hana), Deutsche Bank, and Bloomberg.
Ken Brophy
Principal Application Engineer, RTI
Mr. Brophy is a Principal Software Engineer and serves as the tools team lead at RTI. He has over 20 years of experience in every major stage of developing large-scale distributed systems including, research, architecture, design, implementation, testing, deployment, consulting, and training. Mr. Brophy has led several teams of software engineers and is currently leading an international team of software engineers who develop tools for real-time middleware.
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Download BioAgenda
8:30 - 9:00 am
Welcome & Opening Remarks
9:00 - 10:30 am
Building Smart Machines with the Right Software Infrastructure
Speaker: Bert Farabaugh, Director of Field Application Engineering, RTI
In today's world of Smart Machines, it has become increasingly more difficult to choose a communications infrastructure that can support the functionality required. This seminar will investigate the various technologies that can be used to facilitate data communications within and among these smart machines. We will analyze architecture choices based on system requirements. With a focus on real-time requirements of Smart Machines, we will dive into the Data Distribution Service standard, along with development, testing and debugging techniques. We will demonstrate ways for Smart Machines to interact with legacy systems and the cloud. We will investigate connectivity solutions and micro services related to Smart machine development.10:30 - 10:45 am
Break
10:45 - 11:10 am
Optimizing Model-Based Design using QoS and DDS, MathWorks
Speaker: Mark McBroom, Application Engineering Manager, MathWorks
Complex distributed systems require tight communication among a diverse set of intelligent data-driven apps and devices. This adds complexity into the model and simulation stage, as engineers work to test, rework, move and re-test before development starts. In order to develop systems that work as designed, data flows need to be built into the model from the earliest stages. In this session you will learn how to model, simulate and generate C++ code for applications that use DDS and Quality of Service (QoS) policies with Simulink and the new DDS Blockset from MathWorks.11:15 - 11:40 am
Enabling Distributed Machine Learning with the Connext Python API
Speaker: Protima Banerjee, PhD Adjunct Professor, Department of Computer Science, Rowan University
Machine learning is a critical component of the IoT; the ability to generate insights and knowledge from the data extracted from IoT devices is a fundamental value proposition. However, the use of machine learning (ML) techniques in IoT brings up several challenges related to data distribution. Data produced by IoT devices might be processed in the data sources themselves or aggregated and sent to higher level performance compute nodes. This presentation will discuss the usage of the Connext Python API to enable low-latency, reliable data sharing in machine learning applications written in natively in Python, based on such libraries as Tensorflow and Pytorch.
11:45 - 1:00 pm
Networking Lunch
Lunch will be provided
1:00 - 1:25 pm
Smart Tools for Smart Machines
Speaker: Ken Brophy, Principal Application Engineer, RTI
As machines become smarter and more autonomous, understanding their behavior becomes critical. See how RTI’s tools leverage the data-centric nature of DDS to let you peer into running systems. Develop and debug faster. Learn how to capture and replay data from live systems.1:30 - 1:55 pm
Scaling Up and Scaling Out: RTI Routing Service
Speaker: Ross Gilson, Senior Field Application Engineer, RTI
Smart machines will span multiple platforms and networks. How can you scale up, moving data from sensor to cloud? And how you can scale out, creating systems of systems that work together as one. Learn about RTI’s Routing Service, the Layered Databus pattern, and how to integrate legacy protocols into next generation smart machines.
2:00 - 2:25 pm
Easy Deployment and Rapid Updates: Connext in Containers
Speaker: Ross Gilson, Senior Field Application Engineer, RTI
Containers provide an efficient way to deploy and update distributed applications in smart machines. Connext makes your containers work together as one. With data as the interface between containers, applications become loosely coupled. This promotes rapid updates of existing components and easy addition of new ones, allowing your smart machines to get smarter.
2:30 - 2:55 pm
ROS 2 + DDS = Accelerated Development Platform for Autonomous Systems
Speaker: Andy Krassowski, Field Application Engineer, RTI
ROS 2 enjoys widespread adoption for both automotive and robotics development projects. Learn how DDS powers ROS 2, accelerating robotics and autonomous systems development.
3:00 - 3:10 pm
Closing Remarks
Speaker: Bert Farabaugh, Director of Field Application Engineering, RTI
3:10 - 3:30 pm
Q&A Session