Chapter Five of seventeen
Chapter Five: Embedded Systems
Red pill or Blue? I'm going to take you down a rabbit hole that ends in a world ruled by a machine race of robots, drones, self-driving cars, smart homes/smart cities, planes, satellites, and even deep space navigation systems. Do the machines we rely on not already rule? The race of machines survive on computing systems embedded directly within their physical structure, thus embedded systems. The future of automation and A.I. lies with these embedded systems and their advancement. The ability to take computing power to places and scales never seen before has accelerated the advancement of global automation. As computing power becomes cheaper, and smaller, ambient computing will become a reality, where the computer itself disappears entirely. In this Chapter, we will explore the concept of an embedded system, look at commercial use-cases for the technology, explore its impact on future industries, and hopefully provide you will an ideal understanding of how the technology can be used to take your ideas, career, and company to new heights.
An embedded system is a microprocessor-based computer hardware system, with software that is designed to perform a designated function, either as an independent system, or as a part of a larger system. Modern embedded computers range in size from a stick of gum to the size of a credit card. You can get them for pennies on the dollar, or for hundreds to thousands of dollars each. Embedded systems are primarily meant for mobile applications, where there is limited space, limited access to energy, and real-time operational safety requirements, such as those of self-driving cars. This does have societal implications concerning privacy, now that computing has become so small that one cannot with surety determine whether another is having unwanted data analyzed. In spite of this warning, we will focus our exploration on applications with positive societal or environmental impact. Let's begin.
The first commercial application involves the creation of Autonomous Aquatic Vehicles, as displayed by the Autonomous Boat with Raspberry Pi by Greg_The_Maker, with Instructable.com. Currently, the global sea infrastructure, including ports, docks, shipping lanes, fishing, and other ocean-based commerce has yet to become fully or even partly automated. The integration of powerful embedded systems throughout the process, will create enhanced levels of efficiency, savings, and system performance. Such systems will allow for the efficient tracking of goods across worldwide shipping lanes, enhanced weather observations for increased safety, as well as allowing for the automated detecting, tracking, and cleaning-up of ocean pollution.
The next autonomous use-case involves the sector of Agriculture. Matt Reimer, from Southwestern Manitoba, Canada, utilized the Pixhawk Flight Controller, an embedded device, to automatically pilot his tractor using a set of Arduino’s and a Pixhawk autopilot controlling the tractor's cab actuators, while running Ardupilot, DroneKit, and his own Autonomous Grain Cart software. This device is an example of the vast change by automation that is coming to the Agricultural economy. With automated vehicles this large, and irregular terrain to think of, there are still various technical issues that still have yet to be addressed, but an advancement nonetheless.
The next project, a hot water controller, involves the small but capable Teensy embedded micro-controller, and a 128x64 graphic display. The high cost of commercial hot water controllers, drove Paul and Rich, the project creators, to devise a cheaper solution. Without a hot water controller, the high temperatures would force overheating and over pressure conditions fairly quickly within a few minutes, and as a result, the hardware and software have to be reliable and bug-free, showing the versatility of the device.
Here, this Social Distancing Device takes the Arduino Nano embedded micro-controller, and utilizes it to measure social distancing. One could clip this device onto their belt, in order Homework: Students will receive 1 Quantum BNB (www.quantumcoins.org) for every completed chapter. Visit Metamask.io and create a Metamask Account. Visit the following link for instructions to set up the Metamask Account correctly, and receive your Loyalty Rewards: www.infinite8institute.com/walletto create accurate measurements. An alarm or device will go off when you are less than six feet away from other humans. A LED light also glows when the alarm beeps. The use-case of this device is only one of many, and with the size of the Arduino Nano, we have only scratched the surface concerning the possibilities.
This MIT Autonomous Vehicle Technology Study, measured human behavior in autonomous vehicles. While doing so, each vehicle was powered by the BananaPi, another Linux-based Micro-controller, powerful enough to control the systems of a self-driving vehicle. The excellent performance and price-point of the BananaPi have made it a favorite among research institutions developing self-driving car technology and applications.
For powering the future of autonomous vehicles, NVIDIA offers a comprehensive suite of hardware and software solutions under the DRIVE platform. The DRIVE AGX Orin, delivers exceptional performance for the most demanding self-driving applications.
The DRIVE AGX Orin boasts a 254 TOPS processing capability, surpassing the Xavier's 30 TOPS by a significant margin. Despite its power, it consumes significantly less energy than the former Pegasus generation, with a maximum draw of 175 watts. This efficiency is achieved through the NVIDIA Orin system-on-a-chip (SoC), an advanced architecture consisting of Arm Cortex-A78AE CPUs, NVIDIA Ampere architecture GPUs, and AI-specific Tensor Cores. Additionally, Orin comes in various configurations, starting from 40 TOPS models, making it more versatile for different levels of autonomous driving needs.
Drone Technology allows for one of the most important use-cases for embedded systems. A drone has to analyze information from 360 degrees, stabilize flight and stay airborne, while often also carrying a payload. Each drone is controlled by micro-controllers of different and varying power, depending on the application. These embedded micro-controllers must operate in real-time with near zero latency or buffering. If these devices do not operate in real-time, catastrophic damage could occur to property, persons, and/or nature. However, power management and weight are still issues that are preventing the technology from truly taking off and dominating and disrupting even more areas of social and commercial life around the globe.
Smart Homes have been around since about the late 70s or 80s of the 20th Century. Only now has the fad for automation come back around again. Smart Homes are simply dwellings where the infrastructure has had micro-computers and micro-controllers embedded within the infrastructure, which control sensors, actuators, valves, wireless communications, appliances, lighting, water, and even the homes functional design itself. According to French Architect, Le Corbusier, “The house is a machine for living”. With sensors placed around the home, the home will have the ability to get to know its owner in unprecedented ways, allowing for new forms of architecture to abound, that dynamically change and alter form, according to the current state of the owner, or the number or type of inhabitants in the space.
Robotics is a field that seems to have stalled, as we do not have walking robots delivering packages to us yet, although Ford is working on it. As a result, Robotics has become a field of Science Fiction, in many ways, rather than one sincerely pursuing the ultimate goal of creating androids, with human features and understanding. These devices must be run on powerful embedded systems, in order to control the physical movement of the device, the sensor inputs, speech and other instructional outputs, while also controlling other programs that must run in the background, and remain ready for execution at a moments notice. The field of Robotics, also has expanded and infiltrated the global consumers home in unexpected ways, such as with the robotic vacuums, toy robots, dishwashers, and other devices. How soon will a robot become your most trusted friend? We may still have some decades to go, but the progress thus far is still impressive.
Smart Cities will have sensors in the roads, bridges, and buildings, with deployable armies of robots, drones, and human service agents with augmented capabilities, using wearable embedded systems to power augmented reality, holograms, and other technologies with use-cases yet seen. There are ethical concerns, in regards to privacy, however, consumers and citizens have given up much of these privacy rights through the mere and common usage of the internet. Likewise, embedded systems provide a solution to this problem, by creating a self-contained system, that can be ran off-grid and without a reliable internet connection, or without the internet at all. Such systems, should be considered seriously for redundancy, and disaster mitigation management.
Ambient Computing is possible purely by embedded systems. The increasingly small size of the shrinking computer processors and circuit boards that comprise embedded systems, allows for such systems to be placed in novel places, for novel applications, such as in fabrics for fashion, or in extreme cases underneath the skin. The technology is quickly accelerating, which seeks to make any sign of the computer disappear altogether. The disappearing act may not mean that computing takes place entirely in the air, but rather computer chips or the embedded systems will become so small that they are negligible and hardly noticed by consumers of the various technologies. While cloud-based services may seek to service this sector, the cloud has buffering and latency issues that may prevent this, leaving embedded systems as the only alternative.
While the industry of embedded systems is exploding, especially with the creation of the mobile telephone, which is also powered by an embedded computer, there will be massive opportunities for those who take early advantage of the technology, integrating it into products and processes. The bar to enter the embedded systems industry is extremely low, as most devices are low-cost, with extensive community support, along with vast coding templates, which make learning the new systems straight-forward.
As automation accelerates, desktop computers and laptops will become less significant, as computers such as the Raspberry Pi 4, an embedded system as powerful as cheaper lines of laptops but powerful enough to allow individuals to work from home on two 4k screens for around $50 bucks, is extremely disruptive to the computing industry. Those that embrace the rapid wave of automation will be winners, while those who wait until they can clearly see the wave is about to hit, will be much too late. In the next chapter, we will explore the nervous system of A.I., the Internet of Things.
Exercises
Can you or your team name three different types of embedded systems?
Do you or any of your teammates own any embedded systems? If so, what kinds?
Are there limitations for the deployment of embedded systems? What kinds of environments might embedded systems be ideal for? Here is more information on embedded systems.
Look at your computer, do you know if you have a GPU? Is a GPU an embedded system?
Ean Mikale, J.D., is an eight-time author with 11 years of experience in the AI industry. He serves as the Principal Engineer of Infinite 8 Industries, Inc., and is the IEEE Chair of the Hybrid Quantum-inspired Internet Protocol Industry Connections Group. He has initiated and directed his companies 7-year Nvidia Inception and Metropolis Partnerships. Mikale has created dozens of AI Assistants, many of which are currently in production. His clientele includes Fortune 500 Companies, Big Three Consulting Firms, and leading World Governments. He is a former graduate of IBM's Global Entrepreneur Program, AWS for Startups, Oracle for Startups, and Accelerate with Google. Finally, he is the creator of the World's First Hybrid Quantum Internet Layer, InfiNET. As an Industry Expert, he has also led coursework at Institutions, such as Columbia and MIT. Follow him on Linkedin, Instagram, and Facebook: @eanmikale