Software becoming the biggest bottleneck to physical AI innovation, finds QNX research

biggest bottleneck to physical AI innovation, finds QNX research">

["At the Robotics Summit & Expo this week, QNX presented its latest research study, 'Inside the Robot: Architecture Benchmark Report,' which examined how robotics development is changing as systems become more software-driven, enabled by AI, and deployed alongside people. The study revealed that software architecture and integration are the most significant inhibitors to progress, with 27% of developers naming them as their biggest performance bottleneck, compared to just 16% who pointed to hardware.", "The research, which surveyed 1,000 software developers and engineers working in robotics across multiple sectors, found that developers are consistently citing four core challenges: integration complexity, certification delays, functional safety risks in human-machine interaction, and ensuring predictable behavior when it matters most. 'Robotics teams are clearly pushing toward more intelligent, autonomous systems, but the data shows they are also running up against the very real limits of architectures that were never designed for this level of complexity or accountability,' stated Jim Hirsch, global vice president of sales and general embedded markets at QNX.", 'The study also found that software development now consumes more developer resources than hardware, with 85% of developers expecting software to play an even greater role in robotics over the next three to five years.

Teams anticipate that their biggest investments will be in AI-driven decision making and cybersecurity (both at 51%), followed by operating systems and real-time control software (37%). As robots move from controlled environments into more dynamic environments, developers are recognizing that software is becoming the deciding factor as to whether innovations succeed or stall.', 'The research revealed that nearly all respondents (95%) said deterministic, real-time execution is important to the systems they develop, but most development teams acknowledged that they continue to rely on software not designed for real-time or safety-critical use. 91% of respondents run these workloads, at least in part, on general-purpose operating systems (GPOS), even though safety-certified commercial solutions are rated as the best fit for their needs.

As a result, 86% of these GPOS users said they are open to changing their OS.', "Regulatory and compliance demands further intensify these challenges, with two-thirds of respondents (66%) reporting project delays because of certification processes. Cybersecurity standards such as ISO/SAE 21434 and functional safety standards like ISO 10218 were among the most challenging areas to comply with, cited by 51% and 49% of respondents, respectively. Despite the software, deployment, and compliance pressures, ambition and optimism across the industry remain high, with 89% of respondents saying that AI-enabled robots that can perceive, reason, and act autonomously in the physical world will be critical to their organizations' strategy over the next three to five years."]