Teledyne LeCroy this week announced it is forming a new automotive-focused testing group and opening an Automotive Technology Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan.
The company said its new Automotive Solutions Group will have testing tools and equipment, a comprehensive library covering both automotive and mobile devices, and test engineers with expertise in the broad range of technologies that are being integrated into connected vehicles.
“The end goal of the Automotive Solutions Group is to improve overall customer vehicle ratings across key categories, including safety, security, durability, performance, conformance, interoperability and reliability,” the company said.
Paul Russel, VP of engineering testing services for Teledyne LeCroy, said the new center and group are giving its customers “the tools and services they need right now to solve their development and technology related issues – fast. We’re local and already working on day one with key automotive companies here in the Detroit area.”
Michigan, as primary home to the domestic automotive industry, is also becoming an epicenter of automotive-related testing. P3 Group opened an automotive-focused Mobility Innovation Center in the area earlier this year, and last year the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor launched its 32-acre MCity connected car test bed with a number of automotive and wireless partners.
In other test news this week:
–Keysight Technologies has a new ECall testing solution for the connected car. ECall technology, which supports automated emergency calls to the nearest public safety answering point in the event of a crash, is being required of all new vehicles in the European Union as of early 2018, and Russia is mandating similar capabilities in January 2017.
Keysight said its conformance test offering works to verify that the in-vehicle modem can trigger an emergency call, send correct ECall data and establish a voice connection with a PSAP; it also has an option for audio analysis. It simulates a PSAP and uses a radio frequency signal generator and wireless test set to emulate a cellular network and thereby provide satellite positioning information.
–Frost & Sullivan says the ongoing adoption of voice over LTE and voice over Wi-Fi and the need for quality of service assurance for those technologies is going to boost the need for communications testing in the next five years.
“While the rapid speed of VoLTE and VoWi-Fi adoption will excite vendors of communication testing and monitoring solutions, it also presents several challenges regarding scalability,” said Olga Yashkova. “The incorporation of sophisticated test solutions into different silos of well-established network infrastructures can reduce the need for individual testing solutions and accelerate the return on investment.”
Yashkova estimated the roughly $1.17 billion market for such testing could reach $2.8 billion by 2020.
–Tektronix launched a new Keithley brand semiconductor test system for wafer-level testing, as well as a new training tool for debugging and validation of 100G connections using its DPO70000SX oscilloscope family. Tektronix also partnered with Granite River Labs, which provides engineering services and test offerings, on three new software products for automated calibration of Tektronix’s BERTscope for bit error rate testing to support electrical conformance testing and test receivers to application-specific requirements.
–Empirix and Edgewater Networks have partnered on a new monitoring solution for visibility and management of cloud-based network services. The joint solution integrates Edgewater Networks’ Network Edge Orchestration platform with Empirix’s IntelliSight offering and is aimed at providing “visibility, management, alerts and analytics from the core of a network to customer-premises based endpoints through a single pane of glass,” according to the two companies.
–Mechanical Technology received a $2.74 million investment from private equity firm Brookstone Partners and plans to use the funds “to focus on the current growth strategy in the analytical measurement market with sensors, instruments and systems,” according to the company. MTI subsidiary MTI Instruments provides test equipment for industries including the semiconductor space.
In addition to the backing from Brookstone, MTI said it has about $51 million in unused net operating loss carry forwards that will be used to offset future taxable income. MTI CEO Kevin Lynch said in a statement that “now that we have stabilized the base business, after a difficult year in 2015, the additional capital will enable us to look to expand our growth strategy beyond our current organic growth model. With Brookstone at our side, we expect to generate and execute on new strategic activities including potential acquisitions.”
–NI has a new PXI platform oscilloscope that includes a programmable FPGA for flexibility. The company also had some news around “internet of things” initiatives: it is partnering with IBM and SparkCognition on a condition monitoring and predictive maintenance test bed for industrial IoT applications.
“The goal of the collaboration is to deliver an unprecedented level of interoperability among operational technology and informational technology as organizations search for better methods to manage and extend the life of aging assets in heavy machinery, power generation, process manufacturing and a variety of other industrial sectors,” according to NI.
NI also is leveraging its expertise in data acquisition of real-world conditions to fuel its offerings in the IoT space, where wireless devices are increasingly being used to collect data. Anna Kozminski, senior software product manager in embedded system design at NI, spoke about the company’s approach and gave a demo of some of its embedded controllers being put through the wringer at this week’s ARMTechCon event.
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