Industrial and energy plant manager can deploy AI and other cloud-based workloads at the network edge following a partnership by Lynx Software Technologies with Google Cloud. The Lynx Mosa.ic platform supports Google Anthos Bare Metal and Google Visual Inspection (VI) AI Service for secure, video-based quality inspection, says Lynx Software.
As a result, real-time image capture can be easily caught on devices such as cameras on manufacturing plant floors. In addition, inference models built by Google Cloud Visual Inspection AI, can generate the insights while the supervisory controller connects to the manufacturing execution system (MES) and translates insights into action. Lynx’s technology brings immutable isolation security which cannot be bypassed, claimed Lynx Software.
Using Google Anthos for bare metal support means that an entire Kubernetes cluster can be run locally in as little as one hardware system at the edge, with Lynx-enabled virtual air gapping providing isolation within the system.
Addressing the security concerns for mission-critical industrial environments around merging AI and machine learning models in the cloud and deploying cloud-based workloads at the edge, Lynx has sandboxed three functions with the options of a secure one-way connection between them. The three functions are for image capture (via a camera), insight via the Google Anthos inference engine and the action with a supervisory controller.
Pavan Singh, vice president of product management at Lynx, commented: “Any containerised service can now be deployed to the mission-critical edge without compromising security or performance”.
Video-based quality systems play a role in enhancing performance and quality of output in industrial and energy applications, while mitigating security risks, said Lynx. Efficient visual inspection can reduce defects up to 10-fold. In addition to preventing the shipping of defective parts, operators can gain insights into the cause of any defects in order to optimise processes
For this set-up, the Lynx Mosa.ic runs on an Advantech MIC770, although Mosa.ic is also able to run on various Intel and Arm processors, facilitating local or on-premises management with the benefits of using the cloud for workloads.
Lynx Software Technologies enables safe, secure and high-performance environments for customers in aerospace and automotive, enterprise and industrial markets. Since 1988 it has supplied real-time operating systems (RTOS), virtualisation and system certification to protect data.
