BlackBerry Limited recently announced an expansion of its collaboration with Intel Corporation that will enable manufacturers to design, build and safety-certify their industrial systems and robotic applications for progression towards Industry 5.0.
Industrial automation in safety-critical environments, such as manufacturing and warehouses, is transitioning towards more collaborative applications, where machines work alongside humans in shared workspaces. As these systems evolve, Functional Safety (FuSa) plays a critical component in keeping machinery and personnel safe. Compliance with IEC 61508 ensures that industrial systems and robotic applications meet the standard’s safety lifecycle requirements.
“The collaboration between Intel and BlackBerry QNX brings to market a hardware/software platform certified to IEC 61508 SIL 3 to simplify manufacturers’ development of and delivery of safe and secure systems,” said Grant Courville, SVP Product & Strategy at BlackBerry QNX. “The QNX® OS is known for its security, reliability and real-time performance, and our expanded collaboration with Intel creates a safety-certified platform for industrial systems and robotic applications where safety is non-negotiable.” The platform also helps accelerate the development of safety applications and streamline design architecture, delivering cost and time savings.
QNX OS is safety certified to IEC 61508 SIL 3 which enables manufacturers to build their FuSa industrial systems and robotic applications. The release continues BlackBerry’s goal of providing intelligent security software and services to enterprises and governments around the world. It also seeks to leverage AI and machine learning to deliver solutions in the areas of cybersecurity, safety, endpoint security management, data privacy, encryption and embedded systems.