Fledge, an LF Edge Project, Enters Growth Stage as Release 1.8 Enables Open Industrial Edge Software with AI/ML, and Public Cloud Integration

SAN FRANCISCO, July 30, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- LF Edge, an umbrella organization within the Linux Foundation that aims to establish an open, interoperable framework for edge computing independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating system, today announced maturing of its Fledge project, which has issued it's 1.8  release and moved to the Growth Stage within the LF Edge umbrella. Fledge is an open source framework for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), used to implement predictive maintenance, situational awareness, safety and other critical operations.  Deployed in industrial use cases since early 2018, Fledge integrates IIoT, sensors, machines, ML/AI tools-processes-workloads, and cloud/s with the current industrial production systems and levels, as per ISA-95. 

Fledge v1.8 is the first release since moving to the Linux Foundation. However, this is the ninth release of the  project code that has over 60,000 commits, averaging 8,500 commits/month. Concurrently, Fledge has matured into a Stage 2 or "Growth Stage" project within LF Edge. This maturity level is for projects interested in reaching the Impact Stage, and have identified a growth plan for doing so. Growth Stage projects receive mentorship from the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) and are expected to actively develop their community of contributors, governance, project documentation, and other variables identified in the growth plan that factor in to broad success and adoption.

"Fledge, initially seeded by OSISoft and Dianomic and now a diverse project within LF Edge, is a great example of open source integration. By working closely with Google and other ecosystem partners on new and emerging use cases, we are bringing the power of LF Edge to a broader market," said  Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge and IoT, the Linux Foundation. "We look forward to building an open community of industrial users, suppliers and integrators." 

Utilizing Fledge to gather and analyze machine, process, environment and operator data in context, improved efficiency, quality and safety is achieved.  Gradient Racing used Fledge, Google Cloud, and Motorsports.AI to build IIoT based digital twins of each track, a machine simulator and an operator simulator to optimize car configurations and driving strategy before each race.  Using Fledge, TensorFlow and Kubernetes, two all-time track records were broken in the GT3 2019 season. See the full story here. 

"Google Cloud helps customers deliver artificial intelligence to applications from the edge to the cloud,"  said Craig Wiley, director of Product Management for Google Cloud AI.  "Fledge's ability to collect, process, transform and send machine data as well as run TensorFlow Lite on the edge makes it an excellent complement to Google's AI platform. As an active member of the Linux Foundation, Google is proud to support this open source community through contributions to the Fledge project, empowering next generation industrial processes and machines."

Fledge has rapidly become one of the most active open source IIoT projects. Adding to the momentum are new contributors, contributions and integrations. Highlights include: 

• Google's contribution of its IoT Core North Plugin, enables secure, reliable transfer of data to Google cloud services like machine learning.  
• OSIsoft's contribution of  the Web API North Plugin, enables Fledge secure, reliable transfer of telemetry and metadata to existing ISA95 systems like PI, OCS and EDS.  
• Nexcom's contribution of CAN bus 2.0, J1708 and J1939 south plugins provide real-time monitoring for fleet management of cars and heavy duty trucks.  
• Dianomic's contribution of new core services, alert services and orchestration services enable advanced vibration-based applications, more security and scalable management.  
• Nokia integrated Fledge with the Nokia Digital Automation Cloud (NDAC), Nokia's industrial-grade private wireless network. 
• Google and Nexcom completed integration of Fledge within Google's Coral line of ML processors and Nexcom's industrial gateways. 
• Flir and Dianomic completed a south plugin integration with Flir's line of industrial infrared cameras. 

Industrial Operational Technology (OT) markets are new to the Linux Foundation, and open source projects are new to OT use cases. Like the LAMP stack enabled web application development, the Fledge project's mission is to enable IIoT application development.  Together we can solve the diversity and complexity issues when collecting and processing data beyond  current control networks and eliminate silos of data by integrating with mission-critical ISA95 systems, ML systems, and the cloud. 

Learn more about Fledge in an upcoming On the Edge with LF Edge webinar, entitled "How Google, OSIsoft, FLIR and Dianomic use Fledge to implement Industrial 4.0," August 13 at 9 am PT. Details and registration here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/9215960636525/WN_1jGqjfJoT4-Iv2y6YDGgYg 

Join Fledge and other LF Edge projects at the Open Networking & Edge Summit (ONES), a virtual experience happening September 28-30. ONES is the industry's premier open networking event now expanded to comprehensively cover Edge Computing, Edge Cloud & IoT. Open Networking & Edge Summit (ONES) enables collaborative development and innovation across enterprises, service providers/telcos and cloud providers to shape the future of networking and edge computing. Learn more and register today: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/open-networking-edge-summit-north-america/

Industry Support for Fledge

Advantech
"Advantech is pleased to be part of the Linux Foundation Fledge 1.8 project along with our solution partner, Dianomic," said David Liu, director of IoT solutions and strategic alliances at Advantech. "Our company vision is to 'Enable an Intelligent Planet.' Open source application stacks for an industrial transformation, along with our rugged hardware, help complete that vision. As a leader in IoT intelligent systems and embedded platforms, we strive every day to better assist partners and customers in connecting their industrial chains through IoT hardware and software solutions with edge intelligence. The field-tested Fledge solution will play a key part in our continued efforts to co-create advanced solutions for a wide range of industries in the Industrial IoT."

Dianomic 
"Dianomic and OSIsoft were pleased to contribute the FogLAMP code to seed the Linux Foundation's Fledge project for the Industrial IoT Edge," said Tom Arthur, CEO Dianomic.  "This first release of Fledge 1.8 is a mature, field-tested solution already operating in power generation, power transmission & distribution, water & wastewater processing, discrete manufacturing, mining and professional auto racing. We invite manufacturers, equipment suppliers, system integrators and partners to join our community as we grow THE open source application stack for industrial transformations." 

FLIR 
"For more than 40 years, FLIR thermal imaging has provided technologies for industrial users to improve their capabilities and safety on the job," said Chris Bainter, Director Global Business Development.  "Partnering with Dianomic we deployed our Ax8 and 300 series cameras using Fledge in energy substations and wastewater plants. Fledge easily and successfully integrated our sensor's video, IR video and temperature reading outputs into our client's existing operational, maintenance and safety systems. Fledge proved to Flir the future of open source for industrial 4.0 applications has arrived."  

Nexcom 
"NEXCOM is proud to support FLEDGE from the Linux Foundation, establishing a growing line of preloaded and edge-enabled industrial gateways." said Alexander Su, "The pre-configured products include the NIFE 105 for fixed assets, and the VTC 1910 targeted at transportation related use cases. In addition, NEXCOM has contributed code to the Linux Foundation supporting FLEDGE southbound plugins for CAN 2.0, J1708 and J1939, to provide real-time monitoring for fleet management. The MVS2623 with Coral intelligence, provides a powerful purpose-built gateway combining the flexibility of FLEDGE with the strength of Google's Edge TPU, better enabling edge use cases like real-time object detection from IP or USB cameras."

Nokia 
Janne Parantainen, head of technology, Nokia Digital Automation said: "We run Fledge 1.8 on our edge platform bringing the benefits of optimized wireless communication to the industrial protocol domain and enabling new use cases across multiple industries. Deployed as part of our Nokia Digital Automation Cloud, it offers a way to transfer legacy industrial protocol data to new solutions. Nokia Digital Automation Cloud provides 5G-ready, reliable wireless connectivity, industrial applications and industrial ruggedized devices for addressing Industry 4.0 needs" www.dac.nokia.com

OSIsoft 
"OSIsoft's PI System is the most trusted source of real-time operational data. We enable the collection, standardization, contextualization and federation of large volumes of industrial, operational data," said Richard Beeson, CTO OSIsoft. "Fledge solves the diversity and complexity issues when collecting and processing data beyond the process control network.  OSIsoft recommends all our industrial customers and partners begin their IIoT journey by integrating Fledge into their industrial 4.0 deployments and asks them to join our growing community." 

Rovisys 
"As an Operation Technology (OT) solution provider that is actively venturing into the world of Industrial AI, RoviSys sees value in using Fledge to collect manufacturing and IIoT data from the plant floor, including connecting to historians and cloud-based advanced data analytic platforms."  said Bryan DeBlois, Director of Industrial AI RoviSys.  "Furthermore, commercially supported FogLAMP enables us to implement vibration analysis, apply machine learning models and detect anomalies to predict quality, improve maintenance, and monitor setpoints.  This helps our customers minimize downtime and maximize production efficiencies across their entire operation."

TQS Integration
"With Fledge, industrial manufacturing now gets the technology needed to acquire datasets from sources that had previously not been able to cross the threshold of traditional cost-benefit analyses. Fledge is uniquely placed to solve data collection on the edge, and within existing process control networks, providing customers the flexibility to apply Industry 4.0 technologies with their entire infrastructure," said Tom Quilty, director of Technology for TQS Integration. "With Fledge, we can advance our customer's ability to maximize their current investments, maximize the value gained from IIoT devices and accelerate time-to-value for Industry 4.0 applications."

WAGO 
"WAGO, a technology leader of industrial control and interconnect products, strives to be the backbone of a smart connected world.  This backbone is created  through constant innovation and empowered connections with our customers and industry partners.  Technologies like the Linux Foundation's Fledge 1.8, and partners like Dianomic help our customers realize their true potential and expand on what is possible in an industrial control system.   The WAGO 750 Series has millions of units installed globally and supports applications with over 300 IO modules and more than 16 industrial fieldbus protocols offered.  Leveraging WAGO with Linux & Docker capabilities provide the means to  add IIoT platforms like Fledge and benefit from all that Fledge offers to simplify cloud integration, management, and orchestration. Employing WAGO for ease of field wiring, data collection and/or control tasks while using the IEC 61131-3 PLC runtime and integrating it with the possibilities of Fledge creates a powerful platform for a smart connected world."

ZEDEDA
"The most successful organizations going forward will have a model strongly rooted in an open philosophy that facilitates interoperability and agility, and the industrial market is no exception", said Jason Shepherd, VP Ecosystem, ZEDEDA, "Dianomic's FogLAMP offer is tailored to the unique needs of industrial customers and their open source foundation hosted in LF Edge helps customers mitigate lock-in and focus on value creation rather than reinvention. We look forward to working with Dianomic within our growing ecosystem to address critical business needs for industrial customers."

About the Linux Foundation
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