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Foundational Software Solutions for Robotic Systems

Drive robotic precision, accuracy, and responsiveness with BlackBerry QNX software and solutions.
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Deliver Secure, Safety-Certified Medical Devices with BlackBerry QNX

Build Responsive and Safe Robots

Maximize the full potential of your robotic systems with BlackBerry QNX® software that is trusted by manufacturers to support the expanding needs of the industry. Our foundational software is time-tested, performant, and safety-certified for embedded systems. We certified our QNX® OS for Safety and QNX® Hypervisor for Safety products to IEC 61508 SIL 3, and have launched both these products in the cloud to help optimize your development lifecycle.

Download our Robotic Solutions Guide to learn how BlackBerry QNX can help you realize the possibilities of your robotic applications.

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Deliver Secure, Safety-Certified Medical Devices with BlackBerry QNX

Enabling Industrial Automation with BlackBerry QNX

The industrial automation sector is undergoing a significant transformation fueled by system complexity, heightened automation, and increased use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to optimize workloads. In response to these changes, there is an increasing demand for higher degrees of precision, accuracy, and responsiveness from robotic systems and at elevated speeds with a growing need for hard real-time systems and functional safety. Leading these advancements is BlackBerry QNX, providing manufacturers with the necessary foundational software needed to build performant, safe, and reliable robots.
Deliver Secure, Safety-Certified Medical Devices with BlackBerry QNX

Delivers foundational software that

  • Optimizes overall performance of robotic systems.
  • Increases system throughput, decreases processor utilization, minimizes jitter and latency, enables fault tolerant and fail-safe processes, adopts power-safe recovery, and reduce start-up time and energy consumption.
  • Provides developer-friendly solutions for reducing development time and integration efforts.
  • Is safety-certified to IEC 61508 SIL 3.
  • Relieves end system certification burden.

Build Responsive and Safe Robotic Systems

Optimize Performance

Reliable microkernel foundational software solutions ensures real-time responsiveness, future-proof adaptability, and fault-tolerant processes. Our customizable and scalable platform also accommodates for demanding applications that incorporate AI and ML models.

Functional Safety

Standards-compliant foundational software that helps accelerate system level IEC 61508 certification up to SIL 3. Specifically tailored for safety-critical embedded systems, our toolchains are safety qualified for enabling the development of safe robots.

Simple to Build

Enables seamless migration from POSIX-based operating systems. Developer-friendly QNX solutions with open-source integration and an extensive partner ecosystem enables developers to build innovative and safe robotic systems.

Advancing Robotics – Software Solutions for Building and Deploying High-Performance Systems

From revolutionizing manufacturing automation to optimizing last-mile delivery, robots are becoming an integral part of society. The development of industrial and commercial robots is complex and continuously evolving. The demand for real-time performance and compliance with safety standards are becoming more critical as robot-to-human interactions increase. QNX foundational software solutions provide beginning-to-end solutions for developing and deploying functionally safe robots, and helps simplify development, accelerates go-to-market, and enhances overall robotic performance.

Hard Real-Time Performance for Robotic Systems

QNX® OS 8.0 is the next-generation hard real-time operating system that enhances overall robotic systems performance. It provides the unique characteristics of predictability and determinism to minimize latency and jitter needed to reliably enable robots across various industries and applications.

Manufacturing

Optimize performance for robots in assembly lines, welding processes, and material handling using hard real-time operating systems. It helps reduce jitter and latency issues in robotic movements, which could mitigate issues around misalignment of components and more.

Surgical

Safety-certified hard real-time systems enhance a robot’s response to a surgeon’s movement. Any delay in response could result in imprecise movements or incisions, which could impact patient outcomes.

Logistics and Warehouse

Robot functions for order picking, packaging, sorting, and inventory management are complex and any disruptions could impact the efficient movement of goods. In this environment, the more responsive the robot the faster orders can be processed and handled, leading to reduced delivery times and lower operational costs.

Defense

Autonomous drones play a pivotal role in reconnaissance, surveillance, and even tactical operations. In this arena, deviations as a result of jitter and latency can have an impact on robotic responses (e.g. irregular movements, inaccurate targeting, etc.).

Precision in Robotics

Download “Optimizing Robotic Precision: Unleashing Real-Time Performance with Advanced Software Solutions” to learn about the strengths of hard real-time determinism and how it applies to improving robot precision, accuracy, and responsiveness.
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Related Solutions

QNX SDP 8.0

Foundational development platform for next-generation systems – merging unprecedented performance with unparalleled security and reliability.
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QNX OS for Safety

Pre-certified to IEC 61508 SIL 3, QNX OS for Safety is a microkernel RTOS ideal for building safe devices.
LEARN MORE

QNX Hypervisor for Safety

Pre-certified to IEC 62304, QNX Hypervisor for Safety allows for mixed criticality of multiple OSes to safely co-exist on the same SoC. 
LEARN MORE

FAQs about QNX for Robotic Software

Which products are currently safety-certified to IEC 61508 standard?

The QNX OS for Safety and QNX Hypervisor for Safety are certified to IEC 61508 SIL 3. QNX® Hypervisor for Safety offers the same trusted functionality and performance as QNX® Neutrino® real-time operating system (RTOS) plus virtualization support. These products are safety-certified variants of the QNX Neutrino RTOS and the QNX Hypervisor, respectively. 

What are the benefits of a safety-certified RTOS?

Building a safety-certified robotic system with a pre-certified RTOS allows you to focus on the higher-level components of the system, greatly reducing the certification process of the end-system. More benefits of a safety-certified RTOS such as the QNX OS for Safety include:

  • Reduced development effort. QNX documents safety recommendations and restrictions to reduce the time and effort (e.g., testing, analysis, documentation) needed for you to develop these materials from scratch—not to mention enables you to design a safe system using these guidelines.
  • Reusable code. Build a platform and reuse it across your entire product line with little integration effort.
  • Accelerated time-to-market. The development process can be streamlined to leverage QNX safety artifacts for quicker approvals from regulatory bodies.
  • Maintenance and support. QNX products are maintained and supported throughout the product lifecycle with the utmost rigger, allowing you to focus your efforts on your applications and not the software it’s built on top.
  • Cost savings. The cost of purchasing safety certification documents can be reduced as it relates to documentation development time and testing efforts. This cost is amplified if there are product updates that require resubmission of documentation.

How does QNX support the pending changes to ISO 10218-1 and ISO 10218-2 standards?

Updates to ISO 10218 part 1 and part 2 standards for industrial robots are anticipated to be released with new functional safety requirements. These changes could standardize the industry’s safe integration for collaborative applications between robots and human workers. Added safety features are anticipated to be more software-defined and could require conformance up to IEC 61508 SIL 3.

How easy is it to develop with QNX?

QNX foundation software solutions are POSIX-compliant and will be familiar to anyone who’s worked with the Linux® operating system. Purpose built for sophisticated embedded devices like robotic systems, the QNX® Software Development Platform (SDP) 8.0 includes the latest QNX OS 8.0, QNX® Tool Suite (including QNX® Momentics® IDE our Eclipse-based integrated development environment, QNX® Toolkit for Visual Studio Code, and command line tools) and the QNX Software Center to provide a full-featured, microkernel RTOS for ARM and x86 platforms with 64-bit support. It also includes a High-Performance Networking stack to support basic-to-complex networking requirements. 

Is ROS and ROS2 available on QNX?

Robot Operating System (ROS) and ROS 2 have been ported to and are available on QNX foundational software solutions. This allows you take full advantage of the benefits of our products while using ROS and ROS 2 to handle the communication between robotic components such as vision systems, speech recognition modules and actuator controls.

Can I build machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications with QNX?

To accelerate the development of ML and AI applications for the intelligent edge, popular AI frameworks such as TensorFlow, TensorFlow Lite, and PyTorch are available with QNX products. The combination of these AI and ML frameworks on the QNX real-time operating systems enables you to build advanced features, such as digital twins for manufacturing sites that enable real-time processing on both the devices and in the cloud.

What communication standards and protocols are available with QNX?

Through our vast network of ecosystem partners, QNX offers a variety of solutions to support the robotics and industrial automation sector. This includes support for CANOpen, Time Sensitive Networking (TSN), Profinet, EtherCAT, Data Distribution Service (DDS), Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT), Modbus, and OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA). For more details, contact us today.

What types of robots does QNX support?

For more than 40 years, BlackBerry QNX’s relentless dedication to technology advancements and real-world applications has been empowering the capabilities of the robotics industry. Our presence can be found in the following examples:

  • Autonomous mobile robots (e.g. surface vehicles, underwater and aerial drones, warehouses, etc.)
  • Automated guided vehicles
  • Delta, articulated, SCARA, and cartesian robot manipulators for collaborative and industrial applications
  • Surgical robots
  • Autonomous robotic cleaners