Unmanned Systems Technology 023 I Milrem Multiscope I Wireless charging I Logistics insight I InterGeo, CUAV London & USA show reports I VideoRay Defender I OS Engines GR400U-FI I Ultrabeam Hydrographic Ultra-2 I IMUs

14 Platform one The Robot Operating System (ROS) is a stalwart of the development of unmanned systems. The open source software has been used in hundreds of air, ground and underwater platforms, and has a wide range of functional modules and sensor support (writes Nick Flaherty). Now a team of engineers who previously worked at Bosch have launched a new company called Apex.AI to make the ROS more suitable for safety- critical systems such as driverless cars. The Apex.OS operating system takes the ROS software framework – and its years of open source community development – and builds the critical pieces around it to ensure that self- driving software applications and algorithms are safety-certified for production vehicles. The C and C++ API is ROS-2 compliant, and the whole operating system is being certified according to the automotive functional safety standard ISO 26262 as a Safety Element out of Context up to ASIL D. It will have production- code quality by eliminating all unsafe code constructs, as well as hard real- time execution and real-time logging and fully deterministic software execution. The Apex.Autonomy module supports self-driving development, whether that is integrating HD maps into the planning algorithm or using a new lidar sensor for the perception stack. In the same way that the iOS and Android SDKs provide a secure, standardised framework for mobile developers to create software applications, Apex.AI wants to build the same kind of software platform for self-driving. Apex.Autonomoy is also designed  from the ground up with production and ISO 26262 certification in mind. It will run on x86_64 and amd64 processor architectures with well-defined interfaces to allow integration with any existing autonomous software stack. A range of lidar sensors has already been integrated and tested, and the module is said to be guaranteed to produce results in a given timespan and static memory for hard real-time performance. The C++ code is fully tested with complete line, branch and condition coverage, and integration tests on Linux, Linux RT, QNX, Windows and OSX. Apex.OS is rolling out now, with perception tools and localisation, route planning and control capabilities planned for 2019. Drive for safety software Driverless vehicles December/January 2019 | Unmanned Systems Technology Apex.OS takes the ROS software framework and builds the critical pieces around it to ensure that applications are safety-certified Former Bosch engineers have applied the Robot Operating System to self-driving cars