According to RTI, Connext 6.1 is the first software framework designed to address the development and deployment challenges associated with remotely-operated autonomous systems.
Autonomous systems must operate in inaccessible, remote, or hazardous environments and since artificial intelligence cannot handle all situations, these applications have to use remote operators to supervise and intervene in difficult scenarios.
Connectivity for distributed control is challenging and applications require high reliability and real-time performance even though connectivity in these inhospitable environments is often unreliable and low bandwidth. Depending on the operator’s proximity, communication may also span local, wide area, public and private networks.
Connext 6.1 has introduced a number of features to enable easy real-time remote operation over any network. For instance, if the network connection changes as the system moves, connectivity is seamless without reconnecting, secure without renegotiating, and reliable without losing information - remote operations can continue in real time without interruption.
Unlike many other distributed software frameworks for the enterprise, Connext 6.1 supports and optimises fast communications across highly variable local (LAN) and wide-area networks (WAN). It does not require software changes to support diverse network types. Its Application Programming Interfaces (API) abstracts the underlying networks, allowing developers to target any environment.
Connext 6.1 offers the first practical design for control of remote autonomous systems and new capabilities include:
- Real-Time WAN Transport provides reliable, low latency and secure communication over lossy, low bandwidth, and public networks. It supports Network Address Translation (NAT) traversal and mobile applications with changing Internet addresses.
- Cloud Discovery Service simplifies deployment of dynamic systems in which applications, assets, and their network addresses may not be known at configuration time. It provides a means for applications to discover each other and directly communicate, peer-to-peer. This minimizes latency and maximizes throughput. It is far superior to traditional centralized broker solutions.
- Built-in data compression improves efficiency over bandwidth-constrained networks. Compression maximizes bandwidth use, lowering overhead and latency while increasing throughput. A choice of compression algorithms and levels allows optimization of processor versus network utilization for different payload types.
