The next big opportunities in embedded computing
VITA's exec director predicts the embedded industry's future: the four "next big things."
| By |
|
This question always seems to come up in my conversations with various companies’ CEOs and VPs these days: What are the next big opportunities that will drive our industry? After long and intensive study of these queries, I have concluded that there are four possible “next big things”: unmanned military platforms, the Air Traffic Control Systems (ATCS), smart power grids, home medical monitoring equipment, and telematics.
Unmanned military platforms
The unmanned military platforms market has been developing for many years and is now taking off like a rocket. This market includes:
- UAVs such as Global Hawk, Predator, Reaper, and others
- Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) such as Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP)
- Robotic soldiers and unmanned robotic soldiers such as Warrior and Talon
- Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) and surface vehicles such as the Spartan Scout and REMUS
According to P.W. Singer in his recent book, Wired for War: “... The number of unmanned ground systems in Iraq and Afghanistan went from almost 0 to 5,000 by the end of 2006 and was targeted to reach 12,000 by the end of 2008.” He further states, “From June 2005 to June 2006, Predators carried out 2,073 missions, flew 33,833 hours, surveyed 18,490 targets, and participated in 242 separate raids.” The 2010 DoD budget confirms significant increases in spending on unmanned platforms. The U.S. DoD is going to mechanize and automate warfare for decades to come.
ATCS
Before the recession hit, the ATCS was overloaded. Airlines leased new planes and opened new routes at a record pace to increase revenue and plan for many years’ growth, clogging the old antiquated system with flights. Since 2008, and the declining economic conditions, airlines have been eliminating unprofitable routes, reducing flights to many destinations, and pulling planes out of their fleets. (Most of these mothballed planes are parked in the desert south of Phoenix.)
The present system of Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) requires pilots to fly on predetermined routes in the sky from IFR point to IFR point, to burn more fuel, and to increase/decrease altitude to avoid collisions at the intersections of those routes. We now have GPS satellites, presently used by all the UAV platforms mentioned previously. With embedded computers in the airplanes and on the ground and all aircraft flying direct routes to their destinations, we can save fuel and time while increasing safety without using humans to avoid collisions. However, the ATCS is now within capacity, and that might reduce the urgency to revise and revamp this system for a number of years.
Smart power grids
With the present power grid, it seems that a tree falling on a power line in Oregon can shut off all power to the state of Texas for a week. The grid is overloaded in the West in summer, and in the winter in the Northeast. Installing millions of embedded computers in all homes, in substations, and in power-generation facilities will make the grid more efficient, more predictable, and more easily managed, as the theory goes. The present transformer and generation equipment makers (GE and Emerson) both have embedded computing divisions internally, so this market could be dicey for board makers on the outside. Nonetheless, the smart grid revamp is underway, and it will use millions of embedded computing devices.
Home medical monitoring equipment (homedics)
People with chronic conditions are visiting the doctor several times per week for basic tests and running up insurance bills. What if they had a medical station in their home connected to the Internet? They could come to that station, hook themselves up to an EKG pad and a blood pressure cuff, and plug in their glucose meter. The data would be extracted and sent to a server at their doctor’s office and compared to a baseline established by their physician for a monthly charge that is much less expensive than all those doctor visits. GE Medical is already involved in this trend, and they have an internal embedded computing group. The other traditional medical equipment vendors have strong relationships with contract electronic manufacturers or their own design and manufacturing groups. But, there could be some business here for focused embedded board vendors as this concept takes hold.
Telematics
And finally, one additional potential application – in the transportation segment – could generate opportunities for embedded board makers: telematics. Many trucking companies are already using GPS and telematics to track their trucks on the road, monitor drivers’ use of time and driving behaviors, and detect whether or not their drivers are speeding. In the future, state, county, and municipal governments could track road use, billing each driver at the end of the month. Also, a telematics system can monitor the speeds of each car on the road and send tickets to speeders automatically. Not only that, a government-controlled telematics system could disable and therefore make inoperable vehicles belonging to tax or child-support scofflaws until they pay up. There are myriad new, wonderful, and exciting applications that the embedded board makers can enable over the next decade just in this telematics segment alone.
