š§š¼š®ššš²šæ *š£ššš¦ šš¢š āšš ššš¤šWi-Fi 7 Signals the Industryās New Priority: Stability
0x0The renewed focus on reliability is motivated by emerging applications. Imagine a wireless factory robot in a situation where a worker suddenly steps in front of it and the robot needs to make an immediate decision.
This example is a real WTF. I really hope nobody is planning on building safety-critical real-time systems on top of WiFi!
I imagine many already exist. But the system should be designed to fail safe with WiFi in mind.
You could safely bet somebody already does
ThrashyI donāt know about manufacturing environments but I deal with laboratories a lot, and Iām a bit baffled at how quickly lab operators have jumped on battery-operated wifi sensors for lab monitoring systems. I have like three room sensors attached to my EcoBee thermostat at home and I can barely be assed to change the batteries in those things, I cannot imagine dealing with batteries and connectivity troubleshooting for a building full of sensors whose reliable operation is often critical for regulatory compliance. Seems like the perfect application for PoE systems, to me
In industrial there are very few wireless systems unless they are either too remote from the CPU and arenāt safety sensitive. Safety is taken very seriously because any incident can mean injuries/death and ending up in the public eye. Any safety systems are hard wired because of reliability.
LinkerbaanAs long as they have a delay counter which immediately shuts the robot down when it a message hasnāt been answered within a certain time period it shouldnāt pose much of a problem if it has an E stop. Just inconvenient when it keeps shutting down all day.
Eager Eagleas a software developer, that example screams bad design
It screams ālive serviceā
It also reflects something probably half the industry would push for since they can monetize it.
If your robot moves around, then it needs a wireless connection. And it doesnāt really get any more reliable than wifi. Iām certainly not going to outsource that to Verizon or use Bluetooth.
And even for things that can be wired - ethernet is far from reliable. Cables are easily damaged or simply unplugged.
As someone using various wireless standards over over twenty years and in IT dealing with wifi instability on basically a daily basis. No.
Wifi is a series of compromises to be convenient. Itās āgood enoughā for most of those but generally and increasingly in newer standards, the compromise is to drop stability for things speed. Youāll see this to be the case in a lot of professional wifi gear that will transfer you to a lower standard if it sees weaker signals to improve stability.
To make that concrete, a problem with wifi in an office is an embarrassing āIāll call back on my phoneā but a factory floor that could be millions of dollars of downtime to restart an entire chain of machines. Hardened industrial wiring and connections is well established and wifi is just not at that level. The poorly formed example of the robot was trying to convey their intention to start addressing that level of hardening.
All that said, based on my experience reading ieee articles this is all exaggerated. in reality weāre probably just getting more stable video calls at higher bandwidths. Still a win for the help desk techs everywhere and people with a heavy wall making Netflix flaky.
I think the point is that that sort of safety critical stuff should be on board, not relying on a wireless connection.
I wouldnāt even rely it on wired connection it should be self contained.
Although to begin with there shouldnāt be a human there to begin with.
Better hope staff donāt Microwave their lunch at the wrong timeā¦.
This sounds like theyāre talking about something specific. There was a guy that picked up/crushed by a robot recently that is eerily similar.
Flying SquidI really hope nobody is planning on building safety-critical real-time systems on top of WiFi!
Are you new to the planet? Let me tell you about this thing we have called capitalismā¦
I work in autonomous vehicle engineering. Thatās not even on the table for something weād consider doing. But China is trying to enter the market hard, and I am less sure they wouldnt do that.